Memoir. Mr. Blake considers the rootlet bed of Kessingland to separate the glacial and pre-glacial deposits in the Cromer cliffs as it certainly does at Kessingland.* This is a probable suggestion and has the merit of being an idea easily grasped, which cannot be alleged of all the theories in the Memoir, though the author deserves credit for his enthusiastic painstaking work.

The relations of the glacial deposits appear to me, notwithstanding the contortions, to be simple enough. First the Till has been quietly deposited in water. It presents no great difference-except in the nature of the materials due to the country rock being different-to our Boulder clay, and, as I have explained the way in which I conceive our Boulder clay has been laid down in my paper on the Drift of the N.W. of England, which will appear in the Q.J.G.S. for May next, it is unnecessary to repeat the substance of it here. That the shell fragments found in the Cromer Till are derivative, if by that is meant derived from older beds, is an assumption with which I cannot agree. Their mode of accumulation, as also of the fragments and "crumbs" found in the Boulder clays of the Yorkshire coast, I consider, founding my opinion on personal examination, was similar to that of our Boulder clays. These fragments, though in many cases of littoral derivation, are yet contemporaneous with the deposits in which they are found. Mr. David Robertson, than whom there are few better observers, in a recent paper, ‡ inclines to the view that the generally unfossiliferous Till of Scotland has been laid down in water, and mentions a bed of muddy sand found under 78 feet of Boulder clay (Till), which contained" shells which were identical with the glacial marine shells usually overlying the thin Boulder clay in the West of Scotland," in which "on further examination echinoder

* 66

Proceedings of Norwich Geological Society." Presidential Address by J. H. Blake, Session 1879-80.

ruary,

"Drift Beds of the N.W. of England, Part I."-Q.J.G.S., Feb1874.

'Post Tertiary Beds of Garvel Park,"-Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow, Vol. VII.

mata, polyzoa, crustacea, foraminifera, and mosses were found, being identical with those met with in the laminated clay above referred to." "This muddy sand bed also contained a large proportion of West Highland rocks, which, we may reasonably assume, belong to the glacial period."* I have shown that some of the Cromer Till at the base is laminated (see section, figure 9); also that there were laminated and stratified bands and beds overlying the Till. The Till appears to have been laid down in quiet water like our Lancashire Boulder clays and after a certain period the conditions came on that produced the contortions, and the previously bedded arrangement of clay and sands and the homogeneous Till were worked up and squeezed into the extraordinary contortions the sections represent. These I have endeavoured to show were produced by the drifting of the ice rafts floating the chalk masses from the cliffs from which they were quarried. For the details I must refer you to the paper on the subject. During the accumulation of these chalk "boulders," sand and gravel and clay were still being deposited and no doubt often on inclined slopes and uneven surfaces which would still more add to the confusion by superinduced current bedding. During the whole period of accumulation from the Till upwards erratics were floated from various points of the compass and deposited in the confused mass. It is worth remarking that those who attribute the most extraordinary, and as it seems to me contradictory, capabilities to the ice sheet, making it, notwithstanding the sub-glacial pasty moraine of Till, &c., on which it rests, force up anticlinals of chalk, then roll them up into boulders, nip them up off the shore and push them up into and along with its mixed moraine of Till clays, sands, and gravels, are still compelled to resort to the agency of floating ice t to bring the igneous erratios to where they are found. Nor has it been explained how on each

* "Post Tertiary Beds of Garvel Park," page 17 of reprint. See also my Paper on "The Relations of the Glacial Deposits of the Clyde and Forth to those of the N. W. of England, &c.-Ibid, Read 22nd April, 1880. + See Memoir, page 90.

side of these Chalk Bluffs of Trimmingham-on which so much controversy has been expended-and underneath the chalk boulders are found an undisturbed series of estuarine and other deposits. If the chalk boulders were derived from the chalk of the shore, from which part of it did they come? for we find in most places the remains of the Forest Bed on the foreshore. If from beyond the foreshore, these Newer Pliocene deposits should be found not merely occurring in the Till as small detached masses, but rolled up and distributed over the undisturbed beds and occupying the place of the Till, which in its natural condition is an uncontorted deposit. If the Till was formed under an ice sheet from Scandinavia, as is hinted at in the Memoir, how could the same ice sheet get at the chalk below with a ground moraine underneath many yards thick? And if it were not the same, but a subsequent ice sheet, it would seem strange that No. 2 sheet should act in another manner, avoid ground moraines-although the soft beds of the German Ocean, over which it passed, already provided the materials, and push the sea bed before it, ripping up anticlinals of chalk, forming chalk boulders hundreds of feet long and forcing the whole along pell-mell.

LIVERPOOL GEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION.

May 7th, 1883.

At the Ordinary Meeting, held this date, at the Free Library, Mr. HENRY BRAMALL, M. Inst. C.E., President, in the Chair, the following were elected Members ::

Messrs. T. S. Keyte and J. Findlow.

Proposed as a Member.:

Mr. F. J. Lawrenson, 132, Walton Village, Walton.

DONATIONS.

"Abstracts of Proceedings," Geol. Soc. London, Nov., 1882Mar., 1883,-presented by Mr. G. H. Morton, F.G.S.; "On the strata between the Carboniferous Limestone and Coal Measures in Denbighshire and Flintshire," by G. H. Morton, F.G. S.,-presented by the Author; "The Old Red Sandstone," by Hugh Miller, -presented by Mr. W. Martin; "Proceedings" Liverpool Astronomical Society, Feb., 1883; Ditto, Manchester Geological Society, Part 6, Vol. 17,-from the respective Societies; Annual Reports," 1881-1882, Birmingham Free Libraries, presented by the Librarian.

66

Mr. CHARLES E. MILES (Vice-President), then took the Chair, and a Paper was read on—

"THE MINERAL RESOURCES OF NEW ZEALAND." By HENRY BRAMALL, M. INST. C.E.

PART II.

GOLD.

Discovery.-Upwards of 40 years ago Captain Wakefield found gold at Massacre Bay, but the matter attracted no attention till the discoveries at Bathurst, N. S. W. in 1851, stimulated research. A committee was formed in Auckland, and a reward of £500 offered for the discovery of a payable gold field, and this premium was claimed in October, 1852, by Mr. C. Ring, who washed gold out of the Kapanga Creek. A rush of (Vol. III.-Session 1882-83-No. 8.)