Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/233

Rh, after which salt water again predominated, so that species of Mytilus, Mya, Leda, and other marine genera, lived in the same area where the Unio, Cyclas, and Paludina had nourished for a time. That the marine shells lived and died on the spot, and were not thrown up by the waves during a storm, is proved, as Mr. King has remarked, by the fact that at West Runton, NW. of Cromer, the Mya truncata and Leda myalis are found with both valves united and erect in the loam, all with their posterior or siphuncular extremities uppermost. This attitude affords as good evidence to the conchologist that those mollusca lived and died on the spot as the upright position of the trees proves to the botanist that there was a forest over the chalk east of Cromer.

Between the stumps of the buried forest, and in the lignite above them, are many well-preserved cones of the Scotch and spruce firs, Pinus sylvestris, and Pinus Abies. The specific names of these fossils were determined for me in 1840, by a botanist of no less authority than the late Robert Brown; and Professor Heer has lately examined a large collection from the same stratum, and recognised among the cones of the spruce some which had only the central part or axis remaining, the rest having been bitten off, precisely in the same manner as when in our woods the squirrel has been feeding on the seeds. There is also in the forest-bed a great quantity of resin in lumps, resembling that gathered for use, according to Professor Heer, in Switzerland, from beneath spruce firs.

The following is a list of some of the plants which were collected by the Rev. S. G. King, in 1861, from the forest bed, and named by Professor Heer:—