S50 Mr. Lyell on the Boulder Formation^ 
on ‘ the knowl,’ a bank 20 miles off shore, brought up an entire tusk of 
an elephant nine feet six inches long. The elephants must have been 
abundant ; I have at least 70 grinders, and the oyster dredgers reported 
that they had fished up immense quantities and thrown them into deep 
water, as they greatly obstructed their nets 
Mr. Woodward had previously spoken of the same oyster 
bed, which was discovered off Hasborough in the year 1820, 
and says that during the first twelve months, many hundred 
specimens of the molar teeth of the elephant were dredged up 
by the fishermen, and that the remains of upwards of 500 
animals must have been found there f. 
I was not so fortunate either here or elsewhere on this coast 
as to see the stools of trees erect in this stratum, but so many 
independent eye-witnesses have lately described them to me 
wdth such minuteness as to leave in my mind no doubt of the 
fact. Besides the accounts of several fishermen, Mr. Simeon 
Simons of Cromer states, that at Cromer he saw ten or more 
trees in the space of half an acre exposed below the cliffs 
eastward of that town, the stumps being a few inches, or all 
less than a foot in vertical height, some of them no less than 
9 or 10 feet in girth, the roots spreading from them on alt 
sides throughout a space twenty feet in diameter. Many others 
were seen by him laid open on the beach opposite Sidestrand, 
about three miles further to the eastward, evidently belonging 
also to a submerged forest. All these roots were in a lami- 
nated blue clay, with associated blue sand, the whole, six or 
seven feet thick, resting on chalk. In one place a thin layer 
of Norwich crag intervenes between the chalk and the bed of 
blue clay with lignite. Shells had been found immediately 
below the roots, but I have been unable to obtain them. 
I ascertained that at Woolcot Gap, between Hasborough 
and Bacton, the bed of lignite, containing the bones of ele- 
phants, pieces of wood, and the roots of trees in situ^ had been 
exposed at the base of the cliff in the preceding winter of 
1838-39. A mass of incumbent drift about 30 feet thick 
must have been removed by the waves and currents, in order 
to lay open this lignite on the spot alluded to, and the great 
extent of the submerged forest is proved not only by the nu- 
merous points between Paling and Runton, which are about 
18 miles apart, reckoning by the sea-coast, and nearly as far in 
a direct line, but also by the proofs afforded of its extension 
inland in proportion as the overlying beds are swept away by 
denudation. 
It follows then from the facts above stated that the chalk 
in this region had been overspread with layers of sand and 
• Rev. James Layton, cited in Fairholme’s Geology, p. 281. 
t Geol. of Norfolk, pp, 7 and 2.3. 
