NORWEGIAN PEBBLES ON THE EAST COAST OF ENGLAND. 193 
nearest continental strata of Norway, by a force of water analogous 
to, and contemporaneous with that which drifted the blocks of Fin¬ 
land granite over the plains of Eussia*, and the North of Germany. 
A diluvial current from the North is the only adequate cause that 
can be proposed, and it is one that seems to satisfy all the conditions 
of our problem. 
The pebbles of iridescent felspar, like that of Labrador, which are 
found on the coast near Bridlington, and resemble similar fragments 
near Petersburg T, can only be referred to the primitive districts of the 
most northern parts of Europe. Many of the other pebbles of the 
English coast can be identified with rocks that are known to exist in 
Norway, and must have been drifted hither at the time of the de¬ 
position of the masses of clay and gravel through which they are dis¬ 
seminated ; it is impossible to refer them to any action of the present 
sea, because they occur on the high table lands of the interior as well 
as on the coasts, and because the cliffs themselves, being composed of 
clay mixed with the pebbles in question, are undergoing daily destruc¬ 
tion, and receive no addition from the action of the present waves. 
These foreign (and probably Norwegian) pebbles on the coast of 
England are mixed up with the wreck of the hills composing the in¬ 
terior of each district respectively; and the component fragments of 
* The enormous block of granite which forms the base of the celebrated statue of 
the Czar Peter, at Petersburg, was one of these drifted masses that lay on the marshy 
plain near that city, whence it was moved to the town on rollers and cannon balls whilst 
the ground of the marshes was hardened with ice. 
-J- The Duke of Devonshire possesses a magnificent block of this kind of felspar, 
which was found a few years since in the bed of the Neva whilst his grace was at Peters¬ 
burg. I saw it at Chatsworth in 1821, when it had been judiciously sawn into most 
beautiful slabs, each of sufficient diameter to make a small table. 
c c 
