Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Mr. R. M. Brydone's account of the masses of chalk exposed on the Norfolk coast near Trimingham, published in this Magazine during the first three months of the present year, is a valuable record of facts revealed by the encroachments of the sea, but it raises questions of a general nature, on which I should at once have commented, had I not preferred to wait until I could again examine the sections. This was done in company with the Rev. E. Hill during Easter week, when we found that even since the middle of last October (the date of Mr. Brydone's latest photograph) the destruction had been considerable.
page 400 note 1 I have followed the spelling of the Survey Memoir and my copy of thu Ordnance Map.
page 400 note 2 It may facilitate references to mention that in our paper we refer to the chalk masses as eastern and western (another instance of inattention to the minutiæ of the literature of the subject) where Mr. Brydone and some earlier writers use southern and northern. Herein we followed our notes; for the trend of the coast is more nearly in the former direction. From Weymouth to Sheringham it is nearly west and east. From the latter place it runs about E. 10° S., beginning at Cromer to point rather more to the south, and for some distance on either side of the ‘bluff’ its general direction is from 30° to 35° S. of E., not running quite S.E. even beyond Mundesley.
page 400 note 3 That marked A in the illustration accompanying our paper (Plate XXII) iu the September number of this Magazine, 1905.
page 400 note 4 C and E of the same Plate.
page 401 note 1 This sentence was written in May; see Geol. Mag., July, p. 335.
page 401 note 2 The ‘southern’ chalk masses are mentioned only once in that paper, in a few lines at the end of p. 400 and beginning of p. 401. I shall again briefly refer to them in the present paper.
page 401 note 3 Ann. Nat. Hist., sec. v, vol. vi, p. 305.Google Scholar
page 402 note 1 See Plate IX, No. 16, of Mr. Brydone's paper (p. 130). My sketch ended at the sudden rise of the clay, the left-hand one of the two (the oblong block of chalk beyond) being at that time hidden.
page 402 note 2 The line of worn flints between the white chalk and the yellowish limestone of Maestricht to the south-west of that town is hardly a parallel.
page 402 note 3 According to old diagrams the clay formerly underlay a corner of the chalk of which A is a remnant.
page 402 note 4 If this view be correct, it is a little singular that the chalk should so often show up in this neighbourhood between tide-marks, still retaining in places a skin of boulder-clay.
page 403 note 1 We attach no particular importance to its absence and do not dispute Mr. Brydone's observation.
page 404 note 1 This seemed to have been reduced in thickness since our last visit.
page 404 note 2 See Mr. Brydone's photograph, Pl. V, Fig. 11.
page 404 note 3 Mr. Brydone says this chalk cannot be remanié because delicate fossils in it are unbroken. But, as we can still see in blocks of chalk fallen from the cliffs, the exterior breaks up into fragments, the interior only cracking, so that the former may get mixed with clay or gravel and yet not be ground up, and the latter be only fissured.
page 404 note 4 The drift hills inland from east of Mundesley to west of Sheringham are quite high enough to conceal a buried line of pre-Glacial cliffs. One would be glad if it could be ascertained whether the chalk, worked in old pits and now exposed on the new railway cutting between Cromer Station and Ovcrstrand village, is in sitú or only a very large erratic.