On the relation of the Westleton Beds, or pebbly sands of Suffolk, to those of Norfolk, and on their extension inland : with some observations on the period of the final elevation and denudation of the Weald and of the Thames Valley, etc. / by Joseph Prestwich.
- Joseph Prestwich
- Date:
- 1890
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the relation of the Westleton Beds, or pebbly sands of Suffolk, to those of Norfolk, and on their extension inland : with some observations on the period of the final elevation and denudation of the Weald and of the Thames Valley, etc. / by Joseph Prestwich. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
5/118
![o < N) N) O U1 H o o v: a: o 09 a rh Si n — 09 n 3 o o o O' ?r (TQ O ?r OQ O c/3 > c o -lA. o REtATIOX OF THE WESTLETON HEWS TO THOSE OF NORFOLK, ETC. S4 On the Eelation of the Westleton Beds, or Pebbly Sands of Suffolk, to those of Norfolk, and on their Extension Inland ; with some Observations on the Period of the Einal Elevation and Denudation of the ^eald and of the Thaaies Valley, 4’c. By Joseph Prestwich, D.C.L., E.E.S., E.G.S., &c.—Part I.* PAET I. § 1. Introduction. In a paper on the Crag Beds of Norfolk and Suffolk t which I had the honour of laying before the Society early in 1870, I proposed to term the great bed of flint-pebbles overlying the Chillesford Beds and underlying the Boulder-clay in Suffolk, the “Westleton Sands and Shingle,” remarking that “ the importance to be attached to those beds does not arise so much from their exhibition here [Suf- folk], as from the circumstance that they will serve to determine the position and age of some beds of sand and gravel, generally without fossils, which have a wide range in the south-east of England, and the exact [geological] position of which it is impor- tant to know in consequence of their hearing on many interesting problems connected with the denudation of the country.” I further mentioned that these marine sands and shingle had a much greater extension than had their associated beds on the Norfolk coast, that they ranged through Suffolk, Essex, and far up the Thames Basin, and that the main character by which they were to be recognized was the great preponderance of well-worn rounded pebbles of flint and of tvhite quartz, with smaller variable proportions of angular or subangular chalk-flints, and of Lower-Greensand chert and ragstone, mixed with a few pebbles of quartzite, sandstones, slates, and Ijdian stone, the whole indicating the action of currents or streams, not from the north as with the Glacial Drifts, but from the south and south-east. Eor some years afterwards various circumstances hindered me from resuming my notes, many of which were made in 1845-1855 during the construction of the Great Eastern Railway and its branches, where the sections are no longer visible. At the meeting of the British Association in 1881, however, I gave a short account of the extension inland of these beds, and mentioned their occurrence on some of the hills in Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berk- * Part I. only of this paper, dealing with the coast sections, is here printed. Parts II. and III. will deal with the relation of the beds here described to the Glacial Beds in the Thames Valley, and witli some other questions, t Quart. Joum. Oeol. Soc. vol. xxvii. p. 461.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22446175_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
