150 
CROMER EOREST-BED, 
for where the tree-stumps are embedded in clay, the clay is well 
laminated, undisturbed, and unweathered—which would not be 
the case had it been exposed to the air and to the burrowing of 
worms, and had thick roots forced their way into it. A second 
point is that in every case (and upwards of a hundred of the 
stools have been pulled up and examined by me at different 
localities) the roots do not end in small fibres, but are broken 
off, generally from one to three feet from the stem, and the ends 
are either rounded or frayed out. Taking as one of the typical 
instances the locality at Overstrand visited by many geologists 
on an excursion of the British Association in 1868, when a stool 
was dug up and placed in the Norwich Museum,* the writer 
found the bed to consist of a ferruginous quartzite-gravel mixed 
with some clay, a,nd containing a large quantity of wood and 
many tree-stumps. None of the pieces of wood around or under 
the stumps were particularly rotten, as would be the case had 
they remained a short time in a soil on which vegetation was 
growing, and the bed was not weathered. Several stumps were 
dug out, and it was found that all the roots ended abruptly. 
Unfortunately the roots have been cut off the specimen in the 
Norwich Museum, to allow it to be placed in a case ; the whole 
stump has, however, a battered look, unlike that of a tree-stump 
that had been merely silted up in its natural position. 
In a few instances, in cavities between the roots of stumps 
but little damaged, remains of a peaty loam, such as generally 
forms„ the soil in a fir forest, are seen, and yet the matrix in which 
these stools were imbedded was laminated clay. Some stools 
have the bark preserved in hollows, while it is worn off in exposed 
places. It is remarkable that a large proportion of lop-sided 
stumps (i.e. stumps with all the roots growing from one side) are 
found. This would be inexplicable were the general description 
correct of the way the trees grew on the level surface of the pre¬ 
glacial soil; but when we consider them to have been drifted, it 
is just what might be expected, for the trees most liable to be 
washed away are those growing out of a steep river-bank. 
For a long while the statement that the roots had been found 
interlacing was puzzling, but a group near Trimingham showed 
that this observation might be accurate, and yet the trees be 
drifted. In Fig. 36 the stumps A and B have their roots inter¬ 
lacing, and have grown together so firmly that they cannot be 
parted without breaking. 0 is a third stump of fir entangled 
with the others, but nearly upside down; it appears to have 
grown out of a steep bank. The extremities of the roots and 
stem were in each case worn or broken off, and the stools were 
imbedded in a mass of clay pebbles and lignite, covered by lami¬ 
nated clay, which had to be cleared away before the trees could 
be properly examined. It therefore appears that many of these 
stumps have probably been washed away by the wasting of the 
* Sec Norfolk News, Sept. 5, 1808. 
