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Avestern Yorkshire and the eastern moorlands liad not begun to 

 exist when the ujilift had been completed. But ever since our 

 <listrict emerged from the waters, the wild waves have beaten 

 upon its shores, M'earing them Ijack step by step, and though 

 sometimes foiled by a slight rise of the coast-line, forcing them 

 Ijack and still backward until imposing coast-cliflfs. 600 feet in 

 height, have been formed, which, though for the time they look 

 ■down upon the furious waters when tliey rage and swell with 

 proud aloofness, will yet one daj' soon be compelled to drop a 

 humble curtsey to Father ^^eptune, as with a mighty thud and 

 splash they pay to the sea their trilnite of rock. Meanwhile, 

 upon the inland area the rains ha\e beaten ; the frosts have 

 cracked and crumbled the exposed jiortions ; the rivers have 

 eroded their beds and deepened and widened their valleys, and 

 ilaily carried to the coast their burden of disintegrated rock. 

 Our Hat moorland elevations tell of the former existence of a 

 l)eneplain determined in large measure by the massive and 

 resistent nature of the rock exposed at the surface. Our 

 moor-banks show liow the soft Liassic shales have given way 

 under the attack of the denuding forces, while the more 

 tenacious rock above has resisted those forces until it has been 

 undermined by the disintegration of the subjacent shales, when it 

 has fallen in huge tabular masses, littering with sprinkled cubes 

 and rhombs the slope and the base of the declivity, while the 

 hard liands of the Middle Lias form a distinctive feature in the 

 shape of horizontal ledges or foot-hills, on which, indeed, the 

 lilocks detaclied from the Onlitic mass aliove ]\a.\e often found a 

 I'ulgment. 



Looking from tlie west at the e.scarpment extending from 

 Kildale to Swainliy, and realising that in the main only the forces 

 which are acting to-day having acted in the past, we are impressed 

 with a sense of the potency of Nature's graving tools, and would 

 do well to learn the lesson that is here Avritten for our learning, 

 how quiet, unceasing, persistent work can remove mornitains, or 

 rather carve mountains and valleys and fairest scenes out of a few 

 layers of rock, which l)ut a little while ago existed in the form of 

 disintegrated sand and slimy mud beneath the waters of the sea. 



There is much more that I might saj' regarding the 

 transformations which have taken place as Cleveland has grown 

 to be what we see it noAV. I might speak of foldings and 

 faultings with their ettects and teachings, but fm- considerations 

 of space I will refrain. And of the "Cleveland Dyke" I will 

 only say a M'ord, though it is a physical feature whicli I cannot, 



