CEOMER FOEEST-BED. 
191 
ber of extinct forms, but also abounding in Tellina halthica 
(1\ solidula^ Fig. 116), which is found fossil at Bridlington, 
and living in our British seas, but wanting in all the forma¬ 
tions, even the newest, afterwards to be described as Crag. 
As the greater part of these drifts are barren of organic re¬ 
mains, their classification is at present a matter of great un¬ 
certainty. 
They can nowhere be so advantageously studied as on 
the coast between Happisburgh and Cromer. Here we may 
see vertical cliffs, sometimes 300 feet and more in height, ex¬ 
posed for a distance of fifty miles, at the base of which the 
chalk with flints crops out in nearly horizontal strata. Beds 
of gravel and sand repose on this undisturbed chalk. They 
are often strangely contorted, and envelop huge masses or 
erratics of chalk with layers of vertical flint. I measured 
one of these fragments in 1839 at Sherringham, and found it 
to be eighty feet in its longest diameter. It has been since 
entirely removed by the waves of the sea. In the floor of 
the chalk beneath it the layers of flint were horizontal. Such 
erratics have evidently been moved bodily from their orig¬ 
inal site, probably by the same glacial action which has pol¬ 
ished and striated some of the accompanying granitic and 
other boulders, occasionally six feet in diameter, which are 
imbedded in the drift. 
Cromer Forest-bed. — Intervening between these glacial 
formations and the subjacent chalk lies what has been call¬ 
ed the Cromer Forest-bed. This buried forest has been 
traced from Cromer to near Kessingland, a distance of more 
than forty miles, being exposed at certain seasons between 
high and low water mark. It is the remains of an old land 
and estuarine deposit, containing the submerged stumps of 
trees standing erect with their roots in the ancient soil. As¬ 
sociated with the stumps and overlying them, are lignite 
beds with fresh-water shells of recent species, and laminated 
clay without fossils. Through the lignite and forest-bed are 
scattered cones of the Scotch and spruce firs with the seeds 
of recent plants, and the bones of at least twenty species of 
terrestrial mammalia. Among these are two species of ele¬ 
phant, JE, meridionalis^ Nesti, and M antiquus^ the former 
found in the Newer Pliocene beds of the Yal d’Arno, near 
Florence. In the same bed occur Hippopotamus major^Mhi- 
noceros etruseus^hoth of them also Yal d’Arno species, many 
species of deer considered by Mr. Boyd Dawkins to be char¬ 
acteristic of warmer countries, and also a horse, beaver, and 
field-mouse. Half of these mammalia are extinct, and the 
rest still survive in Europe. The vegetation taken alone 
