53 
~NOTES ON .THE GEOLOGY OF 
- SOUTH FERRIBY. 
By Tuomas A Serna FGS. 
Curator, ‘Municipal Museums, Hull. 
Having been asked to write-a few notes on the geology of 
the interesting district around the pretty Humber-side. village, 
South Ferriby, I do so with every possible pleasure. In the first 
place because for some time I have tried to urge the Lincolnshire 
Society to publish an annual volume of Transactions, in order 
that-the work now being done in this county might be definitely 
recorded ; and in the second place because for many years I have 
taken a keen interest in the district under notice, and haye spent 
there many pleasant and profitable days. It was along the fore- 
shore at South Ferriby that I first became acquainted with 
‘thunder-bolts,’ and before I ever went to school, I walked up and 
down this little shingle beach, collecting these objects, whilst my 
guardians were sewing or knitting on the sands near Ferriby Hall. 
It was from the neighbouring chalk quarry that I saw my first 
‘fossil mushrooms’ and ‘fossil birds’ _tongues,’ and the same 
neighbourhood also yielded my first “ snakestones” and “shark's 
teeth.” A. Roman coin, washed from the cliffs, with the emperor’s 
head surmounted with the ‘spiky ’ crown was also in my early 
collection, and-as each of these objects was described to me I 
yearned still more for further specimens and further information. 
‘This was.a quarter of a century ago; and until recent years my 
summer holidays were ‘regularly spent in this district ; whilst now. 
in these more fully occupied. and. busy days, no greater pleasure 
is mine than to ramble once again in the quarries and on the 
_ shore where my early geological lessons were learnt. True, my 
“thunder- bolts’ have lost their former mystery; they are now 
: Belemnites, of various species; the ‘ fossil-mushrooms” are now 
_ Known to be echinoderins, rejoicing in the name of Discoidea 
_ cylindrica ; the fossil birds’ tongues prove to be teeth of a species 
of shark (Lamna), and the ‘ snakestones'’ are the shells of 
cephalopods, known as Ammonites; but as I examine them with 
more modern eyes, they bring back to mind the former days when 
I was taught the local traditions, and when I was ‘perhaps more 
eager to accept as facts all that was told me than I am to-day. 
