The entire series of these cliffs bears evidence of great and successive changes; the strata, in many places, are folded and bent, and superimposed upon others, which have undergone no dislocation whatever. On the till, with an even horizontal surface, beds of laminated clay and sand are seen to repose, succeeded by vertical, bent, and contorted beds, having a covering of coarse gravel and flints.
Between Bacton and Mundsley, small pits or furrows may be seen at various distances, from the top of the cliffs filled with fragments of white chalk; regular strata being superimposed. Many of these furrows are several feet in width and depth. In the till, to the east of Bacton, these furrows are again largely developed.
The till and marl, layers of which are met with towards Mundsley, frequently present grooved surfaces, and at different places appear to dip into the beach, the grooves left being filled with superimposed sand. The gravel also takes a like dip.
While on the one hand there are evidences which prove the slow deposition of some of these strata, on the other there are proofs of great convulsions and derangement.
As a regular description of the separate strata may not prove uninteresting, let us inquire into the first—
Till.
This term is a provincial word, widely used in Scotland for similar masses of unstratified matter, which contain boulders; and the same term has been applied by Mr. Lyell to this part of the Norfolk strata.
The till is of a dark blue colour, somewhat resembling that of the London clay, and has been classed by some writers with that formation, because of the boulders with which it abounds. Mr. Woodward calls it blue clay. A positive distinction between this and the regular blue clay, however, must be made.
This till forms a large portion of the cliffs between Hasborough and Mundsley, rising in some places from twenty to nearly eighty feet in perpendicular height.—The whole of its organic remains appears to have been washed from other formations, to be deposited in it, and it contains, mingled with them, fragments of almost every rock of the secondary and primary series; comprehending immense blocks of granite, porphry, greenstone, oolite, lias, chalk, pebbles, trap, micaceous chist, sand-stones of various kinds, chert, marl, &c. Near Hasborough it is much intermingled with chalk.
The second stratum, as we descend beneath the till, is the