226 HULL SCIENTIFIC AND FIELD NATURALISTS’ CLUB. 
quarter of a mile off. It formed a lake immediately south 
of the village which existed for many weeks, and was the 
resort of sea-gulls. The rainfall at Wetwang was heavy, 
but by no means exceptional. The clouds however passed 
on in a direct line to Langtoft, and there the destruction was 
very great, as described by a writer in Pearson’s Magasine 
for November, 1900. 
The photographs which there appear were taken in 
my presence, for at the invitation of my friend, the late 
Mr. Woodall of Scarborough, I accompanied him and Mr. 
Grantham to the spot. The deep rifts shown in the chalk 
were familiar to me, though deeper, far deeper in fact, than 
usual, and the amount of excavated material was also 
abnormal. ~ Had the chalk rock been on the surface, the 
result of the rainfall would probably have been somewhat 
different, but the rain had first to encounter a certain small 
amount of surface soil, which was easily worn into channels, 
and the subsequent rain naturally took the line already 
provided, and enlarged and deepened the channels. This is 
one of the most common features in sub-aerial denudation. 
The superficial rock, especially if it is of soft material, initiates 
the drainage, which once established, cuts its way down 
through harder rocks, and even across subjacent ridges. 
Langtoft lies in a hollow into which many lateral dales 
converge, and, curiously enough, it lies actually below the 
only outfall ; hence it is perfectly natural that a lake should 
have been formed. The case at Wetwang was different, 
for there the lake was produced by an artificial road- 
embankment. 
One or two questions arise. Why should the site of 
Langtoft offer such a peculiar hollow? and how were the 
dales themselves excavated? To take the latter first, I have 
known excessive rainfall in winter when the subsoil has been 
hard frozen, and we have skated on sheets of ice in the 
valley bottom. On one occasion at Towthorpe I found a 
pond at the head of Horse Dale with its side burst by the 
weight of water, which was flowing as a stream in the dale- 
bottom under a coat of ice. It occurred to me then that the 
dales, though to some extent pre-existent, might have been 
further and largely excavated by running water, derived 
from the melting of a local ice-cap, flowing underneath small 
glaciers, and kept on the surface of the ground by frozen 
subsoil. I think my friend, Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, F.G.S., 
now of the Geological Survey, has expressed a somewhat 
similar opinion since, but certainly the officers of the Survey 
