72 HULL SOIENTIFIO AND FIELD NATURALISTS’ CLUB. 
The whole of Holderness owes its origin to the material 
deposited during the Glacial period. It is in fact a vast heap of 
morainic debris consisting of sand, gravel, and clay, brought from 
the Lake District, Teesdale, and Scandinavia by glaciers and ice- 
sheets thousands of years ago. In Holderness therefore there is no 
solid rock except the ice-borne boulders contained in the drift. 
As might be expected, the entire aspect of the area is characteristic 
of that of a glaciated country. If we could imagine the trees and 
vegetation, drains, houses, mills, and roads stripped from the land, 
and pools of water resting in the hollows, the country would be 
precisely similar to the land between the melting ice and the sea 
in Greenland and other northern countries—a series of hummocks 
of rocky debris with hollows and depressions between. Such was 
and is the precise condition of Holderness, Instead of being, as is 
so frequently stated, a flat and “‘marshie countrie,” it is studded 
with rounded undulating mounds, or “ barfs,” as they are locally 
called. These barfs vary in height from 25 to 50 and 75 feet, and 
at Dimlington the land is 100 feet high. What is more, the land 
towards the North Sea is considerably higher than in the centre of 
Holderness, where in fact large tracts lie below sea level. Holderness 
has been not inaptly likened to a saucer, one edge of which 
represents the Chalk Wolds and the other the land bordering the 
North Sea. The drainage is consequently from the Wolds and 
from the coast into the Humber via the Hull. With the exception 
of two very small streams, which in the summer are almost dry, all 
the water flowing from the land is carried to the sea in this round- 
about manner. 
On our coast, or on the edge of the saucer, as it were, the 
land is being eroded at a very rapid rate. Mr. J. R. Boyle, F.S.A,, 
has shown on historical evidence, and the Rev. E. M. Cole, M.A., 
by direct observation,” that the boulder-clay cliffs of Holderness are 
denuded at the average rate of seven feet per year. This means a 
strip of land, about thirty miles long and seven feet wide, is 
annually washed away from our coast! It is principally by 
watching the various beds exposed whilst the cliffs are being 
carried away that our information in regard to the geological 
structure of Holderness is obtained. Of course inland artificial 
sections help, but unfortunately these are only small, and are not 
very numerous; neither are they continuous, as in the case of the 
cliffs. 
(1) **The Erosion of the Holderness Coast.” Trans. Hull Geol. Soc., 1895-6, pp. 16, 17 
(2) Erosion of the Yorkshire Ooast, 1892.” Naturalist, 1893, pp. 142-144, 
