146 
CHAPTER IX. 
CROMER FOREST-BED. 
For many years the deposit now generally known as the 
Cromer Forest-bed ” has been celebrated, and a mere list of 
the papers referring to it would occupy several pages.It will 
be best therefore simply to give an outline of the literature of 
the subject, noting all important papers, and mentioning the 
earliest discovery of any new fact. 
Though the teeth of elephants found near Cromer were known 
from an earlier period, the first published notice of the Forest- 
bed was in 1746 by W. Arderon, in which he speaks of ^Hhe 
roots and trunks of trees which are to be seen at low water in 
several places on this coast near Hasborough and 'Walket 
[Walcot],” and also of the occurrence of fossil bones.f 
It is, however, to Richard Cowling Taylor that we owe the 
first description of the beds. In a communication dated Aug. 
14, 1822, J he states that “ from Happisburgh, to the North of 
Cromer, may be traced, at intervals, along the base of the clay 
cliffs, a remarkable stratum containing an abundance of fossil 
wood and the bones of large herbivorous animals mineralized 
with iron. The thickness of this singular bed does not exceed 
two feet, and frequently not more than one. It varies in its 
material, from a red ferruginous sand to an ochreous coarse 
gravel cemented by iron.” [Taylor appears only to have seen 
sections of the hard ferruginous conglomerate often called the 
“ Elephant Bed.”] The stratified organic remains in the cliff 
of East Norfolk are buried beneath beds of blue clay, earth, and 
sand, from 80 to 100 feet in thickness.” He also alludes to a 
letter by Sir Thomas Browne, written in 1659, on the head and 
bones of a very large fish at Hasbro,§ apparently as referring to 
the same deposit; but this is probably a mistake. 
' In another paper, in 1824, || Taylor, in a further description of 
the beds, mentions “ stumps of trees rooted into the stratum,” 
and considers the ^‘Forest-bed” as “occupying the position 
usually assigned to the crag or upper marine formation; ” but he 
also correlates the shelly gravels in the Glacial Beds with the 
* For full list see Appendix. 
f Extract of a letter containing Observations on the Precipices or Cliffs on the 
N.E, Seacoast of the County of Norfolk.— Phil. Trans., vol. xliv., pt. I, No. 481, 
p. ‘275. 
X Fossil Bones on the Coast of East Norfolk.—P/iz7. Mag., vol. lx., p. 132. 
§ See also Excursions in Norfolk, 1818, vol. 1, p. 121. 
II Remarks on the Position of the Upper Marine Formation exhibited in the 
Cliffs on the North-east Coast of Norfolk.—P/«7. Mag., vol. Ixiii., p. 81, 1824. 
