174 
CROMER FOREST-BED. 
15 J fathoms. These beds may be Eocene, but if belonging to 
Crag, they raise the total thickness of t!ie Pliocene Beds at this 
point to over 100 feet. 
About three-quarters of a mile from the shore, opposite Hap- 
pisburgh, large quantities of bones and teeth of elephant, &c. 
have been obtained by the oyster dredgers. The 03 ^sters are now 
all destroyed, and dredging is stopped, but fossils were already 
getting scarce. The Kev. J. Layton, who was living at Cat- 
field when the oyster-bank was discovered, made a large 
collection of the fossil bones.^ Samuel Woodward, writing in 
1833, observes that “The oyster-bed off Hasbro’ was dis¬ 
covered in the year 1820, and during the first 12 months many 
hundred specimens of the molar teeth of the elephant were 
destroyed by the fishermen, who amused themselves by breaking 
them, their wonder being excited by the grinders separating into 
laminae.”t The Forest-bed specimens dredged from the Happis- 
burgh oyster-ground must not be confounded with the Pleisto¬ 
cene mammalia obtained abundantly by trawlers on the Dogger 
Bank. As the Yarmouth trawlers pass Happisburgh on the way 
to the Bank, and also trawl in that neighbourhood, some of the 
dredged fossils in collections have probably been put down to 
the wrong locality. { 
From Happisburgh to Hopton, north of Lowestoft, there is a 
stretch of 22 miles of low coast, along which no Pliocene strata 
are visible ; but where the Forest-bed reappears its lithological 
character is scarcely altered. Near Hopton, about 440 yards 
south of League Hole and under the highest part of the outlier 
of Chalky Boulder Clay, Mr. Blake has observed the first section 
of the Forest-bed, and from this point to Corton Gap the deposits 
have been followed almost continuously. 
In the clifis near Corton it is doubtful to what extent the 
threefold division of the Forest-bed series recognised near 
Cromer will hold good, for both above and below the land sur¬ 
face there are found lacustrine and fluviatile deposits, without, 
as far as is yet known, any trace of marine or estuarine fossils, 
except a single cetacean vertebra. The following description of 
the strata is taken from the notes and section§ made by Mr. 
Blake ; supplemented by trial-borings put down in 1886; and 
notes made during the visit of the members of the International 
Geological Congress in 1888. || 
Pliocene strata can be traced in Corton cliffs for about three- 
quarters of a mile. The upper portion—onl}^ preserved where 
the base of the Lower Boulder Clay rises a considerable height 
above the beach—consists of pebbly quartzose sand, with lami¬ 
nated grey and brown clay. No fossils have yet been observed 
* Layton, Account of the Fossil Remains in the Neighbourhood of Hashorough, 
Edin. Journ. of Sci., vol. vi., p. 199. (1827). 
f S. Woodward, Geology of Norfolk, p. 23. 
J See papers by W. Davies, Geol. Mag., vol. v., pp. 97, 443. (18G8,) 
§ Horizontal Sections, Sheet 128. (^Geological Survey.') 
[| Trans. Norf. Nat. Soc., vol. iv. p. GOG. (1889.) 
