XXxli YORKSHIRE—PHYSICAL ASPECT. 
The Chalk Wolds.—A semi-circular range of rounded 
undulating chalk hills commences near the Humber at Ferriby, 
and sweeping first in a northerly and then in an easterly direction, 
terminates in a line of stupendous sea-cliffs at Flamborough 
Head. Culminating at its north-west corner in Wilton Beacon, 
at an altitude of 805 feet, they present a bold front to the central 
plain on the west and to the vale of Pickering on the north, 
while by more gentle inclines their south-eastern or inner aspect 
merges into the low country of Holderness. 
Originally a desolate, grassy, and stony sheepwalk — over 
which a horseman might ride for thirty miles at a stretch without 
meeting with a fence or other obstruction, and the resort of the 
great bustard and the stone-curlew—this district is now ranked 
amongst the best and most highly-farmed agricultural land of Eng- 
land. The deeply excavated hollows in the Wolds are remarkable 
for the absence of streams, the only rivulets to which they give 
rise being the variable and intermittent ones called ‘gypseys.’ 
This deficiency of permanent streams decidedly affects the verte- 
brate fauna, probably accounting for the absence of such birds as 
the dipper, the sandpiper, and the grey wagtail, which occur and 
breed at corresponding altitudes amongst the hills of the north 
and west. ‘The characteristic fauna of the Wolds must now be 
regarded as a thing of the past. The great bustard, which here 
found its northern limit in Britain, has long been driven out by 
cultivation, and the badger and the stone-curlew are on the 
verge of extinction, the chief bird now to be noted being the lap- 
wing, which occurs in great abundance. 
Holderness—a flat low-lying district of triangular outline 
interposed between the North Sea and the Humber, and separated 
from the rest of Yorkshire by the green Wold hills—is under an 
elevation of one hundred feet, with the exception of Dimlington 
Height, which is but one hundred and fifty-nine; and of all 
districts in the county is probably the one which has undergone the 
most decided physical transformation. There can be little doubt 
that the aboriginal condition of the district, now rich and fertile 
corn-land, was that of a vast fen or swamp—the haunt of the 
