An Essay on the Encroachments of the German Ocean Along the Norfolk Coast: With a Design to Arrest Its Further DepredationsHewitt, William
History
An Essay on the Encroachments of the German Ocean Along the Norfolk Coast: With a Design to Arrest Its Further Depredations
Hewitt, William
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; North Sea; Tides -- England -- Norfolk
The two last strata nearest the chalk are the
BLUE CLAY AND THE RED GRAVEL.
These two beds “seem to have been deposited contemporaneously, as they
are much intermixed, and every where contain the same species of
mammalian remains. From the unusual quantity of bones contained in these
strata, they have been provincially termed the Bone Rocks, but from the
immense quantity of elephants’ bones annually exhumed, they may, for the
sake of distinction, be termed the Elephant Beds.” In some places the
blue clay is deposited upon the red gravel.
The red gravel appears to be composed of rolled materials, which no doubt
have been brought to this place from some distance. It comprehends a
mixture of red sand and gravel, ferruginous and ochraceous nodules; blue
clay, peat, sulphur, loam, flints, pebbles, masses of granite, porphry,
fragments of and whole bones, and is much mineralized by iron.
These rocks are traceable to a considerable distance beyond Cromer.
The immediate bed upon which the strata rests appears to be
CHALK.
This is met with about half a mile north-west of Mundsley, about low
water mark, and for upwards of a mile forms the beach. Near Trimingham
three very remarkable protuberances, which rise up and form a part of
lofty cliffs. Further northward, masses of chalk are included in the
drift, or crop out in the interior, at a short distance from the shore,
as at Overstrand, near Cromer, where a pit has been worked, in which the
chalk is in a very disturbed and shattered state. At Cromer, the chalk
has been again detected, and is every where the fundamental rock, lying
about the level of low water, and rising on the north of that town, to
the height of some yards above the level. At Sherringham it ascends
above high water mark, and enters largely, from thence to Weybourne, into
the strata of the cliffs.
From the appearance then of so much chalk in the immediate neighbourhood,
and some of it apparently in an undisturbed state, as may be seen by its
horizontal layers of flint at Sherringham, beyond doubt its existence may
be concluded both to the east as well as the north.
In the year 1836, the humerus bone probably of the Great Mastodon, was
found at Bacton, after a very high tide, one side of which, from the
appearance it presents, must have reposed upon chalk. This bone was
discovered in the red gravel, which, in many places, is the nearest bed
to the chalk. Fragments of chalk are attached to the bone.
In the early part of this year the tibia probably of the same animal, was
exposed, and obtained after a high tide by Mr. Green, in whose possession
it still remains.
CHAPTER IX.
OBSERVATIONS UPON THE CLIFFS CONTINUED.—LAND-SPRINGS, THEIR INJURIOUS
EFFECTS, WITH PLAN TO COUNTERACT THEM.—REDUCTION OF THE CLIFFS CONSIDERED
ADVISABLE, ESPECIALLY WHERE GREAT IRREGULARITIES IN SAND DUNES EXIST,
WITH A PLAN TO INCREASE THEIR HEIGHT WHERE NECESSARY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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