The Student's Elements of GeologyLyell, Charles, Sir
Science
The Student's Elements of Geology
Lyell, Charles, Sir
Geology
Cromer Forest-bed.—Intervening between these glacial formations and the
subjacent chalk lies what has been called the Cromer Forest-bed. This
buried forest has been traced from Cromer to near Kessingland, a
distance of more than forty miles, being exposed at certain seasons
between high and low water mark. It is the remains of an old land and
estuarine deposit, containing the submerged stumps of trees standing
erect with their roots in the ancient soil. Associated with the stumps
and overlying them, are lignite beds with fresh-water shells of recent
species, and laminated clay without fossils. Through the lignite and
forest-bed are scattered cones of the Scotch and spruce firs with the
seeds of recent plants, and the bones of at least twenty species of
terrestrial mammalia. Among these are two species of elephant, _E.
meridionalis,_ Nesti, and _E. antiquus,_ the former found in the Newer
Pliocene beds of the Val d’Arno, near Florence. In the same bed occur
_Hippopotamus major, Rhinoceros etruscus,_ both of them also Val d’Arno
species, many species of deer considered by Mr. Boyd Dawkins to be
characteristic of warmer countries, and also a horse, beaver, and
field-mouse. Half of these mammalia are extinct, and the rest still
survive in Europe. The vegetation taken alone does not imply a
temperature higher than that now prevailing in the British Isles. There
must have been a subsidence of the forest to the amount of 400 or 500
feet, and a re-elevation of the same to an equal extent in order to
allow the ancient surface of the chalk or covering of soil, on which
the forest grew, to be first covered with several hundred feet of
drift, and then upheaved so that the trees should reach their present
level. Although the relative antiquity of the forest-bed to the
overlying glacial till is clear, there is some difference of opinion as
to its relation to the crag presently to be described.
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