YORKSHIRE— PHYSICAL ASPECT. XxV 
The first ten or twelve miles of the Yorkshire coast, com- 
mencing from the mouth of the Tees, is low and fronted bya reach 
of firm sandy beach, but at Marske and Saltburn begins to rise. 
Here the Cleveland hills begin to present towards the sea a line 
of liassic and oolitic cliffs extending for forty-four miles, and ter- 
minating at the Castle Hill of Scarborough. These Cleveland 
sea-cliffs—amongst the loftiest in England, and attaining their 
maximum height of 680 feet at Boulby—afford several breeding 
stations for the cormorant and the herring gull, whilst along 
their range the raven formerly bred in scattered pairs in suit- 
able stations. It is indeed probable that a single pair still lingers 
at a locality which it would hardly be politic further to indicate. 
The birds are there often seen, and as the species is not of a 
roving disposition, the probabilities are that they still nest. The 
Scarborough Castle Hill—the outlying mass of rock which marks 
the southward termination of the Cleveland cliffs, was also in © 
former times a breeding-station of this bird, and it is recorded to 
have nested there for the last time about 1850. 
The coast—now the eastern termination of the Vale of 
Pickering—is comparatively low from Scarborough southward, 
and mostly composed of soft rocks which offer but slight resistance 
to the destructive action of the waves, save where the hard sand- 
stone reef of Filey Brigg projects into the sea. The shores are 
here composed of sandy beaches. On the diluvial cliffs near 
Filey a few herring gulls breed annually. 
Some distance S.S.E. of Filey the chalk deposits of England 
reach their northern termination in a lofty range of tide-washed 
mural precipices, the well-known cliffs of Speeton, Buckton, 
Bempton, and Flamborough, the most extensive and densely 
inhabited breeding resort of sea-fowl in England. Here guille- 
mots, puffins, razorbills, and kittiwakes breed in countless 
multitudes, the guillemots being by far the most numerous; and 
there are also a pair or two of herring gulls, and a few cormo- 
rants. In a cave in Buckton cliff called ‘The Cote’ the rock 
dove breeds in great numbers, and its congener the stock dove 
is particularly numerous, breeding in the cliffs south of the North 
Landing at Flamborough. The house martins have their nests 
