Immediately beyond the Nase the shore suddenly recedes and forms a kind of estuary, terminated towards the east by the projecting cliff of Harwich, which is capped in a similar manner with beds of these shells. The height of this cliff' is from forty to fifty feet, about twenty-two feet of the lower part of which is the upper part of the blue clay stratum; “ above which,” as Mr. Dale observes, to within two feet of the surface, are divers strata of sand and gravel mixed with fragments of shells, and small pebbles; and it is in some of these last mentioned strata that the fossil shells are imbedded. These fossils lie promiscuously together, bivalve and turbinate, neither do the strata in which they lie observe any order, being sometimes higher and sometimes lower in the cliff; with strata of sand, gravel, and fragments of shells between. Nor do the shells always lie separate or distinct in the strata., but are sometimes found in lumps or masses, something friable, cemented together with sand and fragments, of a ferruginous or rusty colour, of which all these strata are.”[1]
The coast of Essex is here separated from that of Suffolk by the river Stour, by which the continuity of this stratum is necessarily interrupted. It however occurs again on the opposite side of the river, and through Suffolk and great part of Norfolk the same bed of shells is found on digging; thus appearing to extend over a tract of at least forty miles in length.
These shells are in general found in the same confused mixture, as is described by Mr. Dale; but they are also sometimes so disposed, that patches of particular genera and species appear to be now occupying the very spots where they had lived. This seems particularly
- ↑ Appendix by Samuel Dale to the History and Antiquities of Harwich and Dovercourt by Silu Taylor, 1732.
