Dr Mitchell on the Chalk and Flint of Yorkshire, 69 



the road from Scarborough to Bridlington. In the dry season 

 of the year no roads could be better, but the coachmen stated to 

 me that it was a bad material for winter. Still it is sufficiently 

 good to obtain a preference, although on each side there is an 

 abundance of either limestone or oolite, which might be substi- 

 tuted if necessary, at merely the expense of a little longer car- 

 riage. In the southern counties chalk is found to make a use- 

 ful substratum, as in the case of the New North road near Lon- 

 don, but I have never seen it used as the chief material for any 

 turnpike road, nor even for any parish road, except near Dun- 

 stable, in the county of Bedford. I have heard of it being used 

 in some places in Buckinghamshire. A geological proof of the 

 hardness of the Yorkshire chalk may be drawn from the great 

 size of the diluvial rounded fragments on the top of the cliffs. 

 In the southern counties the fragments in the diluvium above 

 the chalk are generally small, at the most of a few ounces 

 weight, but the fragments on the lop of the cliffs in Yorkshire 

 must be reckoned by the pound and stone -weight, and in some 

 parts of the cliff these fragments are heaped above each other, 

 and display a front of at least ten feet between the solid chalk 

 and the mould at the top. The diluvial action may probably 

 have proceeded from the north-east, and it is very obvious that 

 great changes must have taken place, and that the land must 

 at one time have extended much beyond the space which it at 

 at present occupies. Fragments of the various products of this 

 coast I found in the diluvium on the east side of the top of 

 Mount Sorrel in Leicestershire, and similar fragments may be 

 collected in considerable abundance in the gravel pits at Mus- 

 well Hill, near London. A still more striking proof of the 

 hardness of the chalk is seen in the immense blocks which lie 

 at the foot of the cliffs, more particularly under Specton Cliffs. 

 Though sometimes smaller, yet they are in general of many 

 tons weight, and are in the form of regular cubes or rectangular 

 solids, and they seem to bid defiance to the fury of the waves 

 of the German Ocean, driven in with the full violence of the 

 north-eastern storms. In these blocks of chalk are masses of 

 flint extending from side to side, the chalk and flint adhering 

 together as firmly as if they were only one substance. From 

 my own personal experience I can state, that the hammer which 



