366 
Mr. Lyell on the Boulder Formation^ 
in fact it has been brought bodily into its present position. 
The intercalated masses of unregenerated chalk are some- 
times horizontal, sometimes vertical. Of the former I ob- 
served an example near West or Upper Runton, where a mass 
of chalk marl 15 feet thick, which I could not distinguish from 
undisturbed chalk, reposed on stratified blue clay 20 feet thick, 
and was again covered by stratified loam 30 feet thick. 
The most remarkable example which I saw of a mass of 
chalk protruding in the midst of the drift adjoins to Old Hythe 
Gap about three quarters of a mile west of Sherringham : it is 
represented on a small scale by Mr. R. C. Taylor in his coast 
section, though nowhere described as far as 1 am aware. I 
found the shape of this mass considerably altered between the 
years 1829 and 1839, and by a comparison of its appearance 
at these two periods, I was able to form a more correct idea 
of its relative position to the chalk and drift than I could pos- 
sibly have done during a single visit. In order to understand 
the peculiar position of this great outlier, the reader must be 
informed, that the fundamental chalk, which at Cromer does 
not rise above low water, begins, immediately west of Sherring- 
ham, to rise and form a ledge a few feet above high-water 
mark, being usually covered by a hard breccia of crag, com- 
monly called the pan, nearly 1 foot thick. The waves at 
high tides and during storms wash over this ledge, and sweep 
away the more destructible clay, sand, and gravel of the over- 
lying drift, which is thus made to recede four or five feet in- 
ward from the beach or seaward termination of the ledge ol 
chalk. The chalk thus clearly exposed is seen by its hori- 
zontal layers of flint to be undisturbed. 
The drift sometimes reposes in horizontal and sometimes 
in curved beds on the pan or ferruginous breccia of crag. x\t 
Old Hythe point above mentioned, the beds of drift suddenly 
become vertical for a height of nearly 70 feet, and flank an 
enormous pinnacle of chalk between 70 and 80 feet in height, 
(see fig. 13), which is enveloped in drift. 
In tliis figure the fundamental chalk is seen at the bottom 
with its horizontal flints, and immediately upon the chalk the 
pan or layer of consolidated crag, continuous in this spot and 
varying in thickness from 6 to 12 inches. It contains large 
chalk flints and fragments of shells cemented by oxide of iron. 
The broken shells are abundant at some spots. Among them 
were observed Cyprina islandica, Tellina solidula, Mya are-- 
naria ? Cardium , Littorina littorea, Fusus striatus, Ba- 
lanus . Next above the crag is the huge pinnacle or 
needle of chalk, distinctly separated from the fundamental 
chalk by “ the pan.’’ Chalk flints are scattered somewhat 
