CROMEK FOREST-BEDo 
167 
for Jit Mundesley there is a Post-glacial bed, which cuts into the 
Forest-bed ; and the Arctic, the Upper, and the Lower Fresh¬ 
water Bed also occur. The general section of the lower part of 
the cliff is :—■ 
2nd Till. «• Boulder Clay, very chalky. 
Arctic Fresh- / Sands with freshwater shells, and clays with Arctic 
water Bed. 1 . plants j Sdlix polaris, &c. 
Leda^yalis ^nd clays, perhaps marine. 
Upper Fresh- / Blue peaty clay, full of TJnios, seeds, and fish-bones 
water Bed. \ (local patches only). 
{ Laminated clay and sand, with beds of mussels. 
Gravel, clay-pebbles, lignite, mammalian bones, and 
cakes of peat bored by Pliolas, representing the de¬ 
stroyed Lower Freshwater Bed. 
At this locality all the beds are fossiliferous, and can be seen 
in vertical succession after storms have cleared away the talus. 
The Upper Freshwater Bed is thin, and only preserved in small 
patches, which occur at about two feet above the beach on the 
south-east side of the village, for about 60 yards beyond the 
broken sea-wall. The bed rests in slightly eroded hollows in 
the estuarine clays of the Forest-bed, and does not exceed six or 
eight inches in thickness, though it is very fossiliferous. At one 
spot the clay beneath it is weathered white, and shows obscure 
traces of roots. Derivative fragments of Tellina balthica and 
Cardium, and a Bcdanus with the valves united were washed 
out of the Freshwater clay, mixed with perfect specimens of 
Valvata and Ancylus. 
The contemporaneous fossils of this thin seam are like those 
found at Sidestrand, but the locality is more prolific, and has 
yielded a larger number of species, though a less quantity of the 
clay has been minutely examined. The vertebrata are only re¬ 
presented by the vole, frog, and three or four species of fish, large 
mammals being absent, as is often the case on this horizon. 
The underlying estuarine beds contain a number of bones of 
large mammals, principally elephant, rhinoceros, and deer ; many 
specimens being found every year, though tha principal fossi¬ 
liferous horizons are only occasionally laid bare. 
Till lately I had never been able to examine the strata hidden 
by sand on the lower part of the foreshore at Mundesley, though 
down to half-tide level they were occasionally visible. It was 
thus quite unexpectedly that on boring through a platform of 
hard gravel at mean-tide, the soft loams of the Weybourn Crag 
or Chillesford Clay were immediately entered {see p. 137). This 
proved that the l^orest-bed Series was here thinner than had 
been imagined, and also accounted for the absence of ledges near 
low-water ; for the loams are much too soft to form ledges, and 
are scoured away directly they are laid bare. 
For some distance south there is no change of importance in 
the lithological character of the estuarine beds. At a quarter of 
a mile south-east of the sea-wall, immediately above the beach. 
