ARCTIC FRESHWATER BED, 
195 
loam containing Hyjpnum turgescens and leaves of Balix 
^wlaris. No further account of this stratum appears to have been 
published till 1880, when, in a short paper in the Geological 
Magazine,t I showed that it is separated from the Forest-bed by 
the marine Leda-myalis Bed, and placed it, on account of the 
very arctic character of the climate it showed, at the base of the 
Pleistocene Deposits under the name “ Arctic Freshwater Bed.’^ 
During the progress of the Geological Survey, the Arctic 
Freshwater Bed was discovered at two new localities about 
14 miles apart,—at Beeston, and at Ostend, near Bacton. From 
the uniform character of the deposit, and from the way it appears 
to be cut out by the Boulder Clay, there is very little doubt 
that the three known exposures represent isolated patches of a 
once continuous and important deposit. 
No sections of the bed have been seen near Weybourii, but at 
Lower Sherringham, on each side of the village, directly under 
the Boulder Clay, there are sands and thin loams with Buccinea 
and occasional Pisidia, which probably represent this stratum. 
At Beeston for a considerable distance, in fact till the Boulder 
Clay cuts through the beds to near the beach line, sands and 
loams with occasional freshwater shells occur about 10 or 15 
feet above high-water mark, and immediately under the Boulder 
Clay. At one point, midway between Beeston Hill and the 
small stream, there is a lenticular mass of laminated peaty loam, 
which has yielded well-preserved plant remains, including moss 
and numerous leaves of Balix polaris. 
The loam seems to occupy a channel, for during 1889 a new 
section was observed, in which several feet of bedded blue loam 
occurred directly over the carbonaceous Forest-bed. A sample 
of this loam was taken, under the impression that it belonged 
to the Forest-bed. On examining it afterwards in London it 
was found, however, that it must represent the base of the 
higher zone. It was full of mosses (not yet determined), and 
contained leaves of the Arctic birch and willow {Betula nana and 
Balix polaris). It also yielded fruit of a number of plants not 
previously known from the Arctic Freshwater Bed, so that in 
this seam we may perhaps have a flora less arctic than that 
higher up and immediately under the Boulder Clay. 
Another more difficult question was raised by this exposure. 
Is it perfectly certain that the loam with Arctic plants does not 
lie beneath instead of above the Leda-myalis Bed ? Unfor¬ 
tunately the two deposits have not yet yielded characteristic 
fossils at the same locality. I am now less inclined to attach 
importance to scattered marine shells, than when the Cromer 
Memoir was written. It is clear that fragments of derivative 
marine shells occur occasionally in the Arctic Freshwater Bed ; 
perhaps the shelly sands usually found between the two fresh- 
* See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 1873, pp. 261, 262; and Journal of Botany, 
N.S., vol. ii.. p. 225. (1873.) 
f Geol. May., dec. 11., vol. vii., p. 548, 
