OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 
125 
shingly gravels derived directly from the Chalk, acquiring 
their rounded form in glacial times, or did they originate at 
an earlier period, as pebbly layers in some Tertiary deposit 
formerly existing on the bed of the North Sea ? I am 
inclined to adopt the latter view. 
Blocks of indurated flint gravel similar to the Eocene 
pudding-stone of Hertfordshire are not infrequently met with 
on the beach near Cromer, and a few years since a large 
boulder of fossiliferous pebbly Crag was observed at Runton 
by Mr. J. W. Stather of Hull. 
The Westleton beds become more pebbly and less sandy as 
we trace them southwards, suggesting, if the theory of their 
derivative origin be accepted, that Tertiary strata such as 
those suggested, were more strongly developed in that 
direction. Although the Westleton beds are, in my opinion, 
of Pleistocene age, the pebbles do not present the appearance 
of a glacial origin. There is nothing resembling them in the 
undoubted Middle Glacial deposits of other districts, either 
in those which overlie the Lower Glacial brick-earth in 
Norfolk, or which, elsewhere, as in Suffolk, underlie the Chalky 
boulder-clay. They seem to have undergone a prolonged 
and uniform process of rolling on the shore of some former 
sea ; had they been spread out by flood water issuing from 
the termination of an advancing ice-sheet, they would have 
been of a less uniform and more subangular character. 
The view that the Westleton pebbles were derived from 
an Eocene or Pliocene source was taken by Sir H. H. 
Howorth in 1895.* He suggested, however, that they had 
been drifted from the west eastwards. If they are of Lower 
Glacial age, as I am inclined to think, they may more 
probably have been derived, as before stated, from the north- 
east, or east, and from the bed of the North Sea. 
Mr. H. B. Woodward holds a somewhat different opinion. 
He considers that where such pebbly gravels underlie the 
Lower Glacial brick-earth they should be referred to the 
Crag, and where they overlie it to the Middle Glacial. The 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xli (1895), 496. 
