A GEOLOGICAL RAMBLE TO INCLEBOROUGH. 97 



"We enter Airedale at Shipley and from here up to Clapliam, the 

 scenery here is most splenJiil. Oa the right haiid side going up, lies the 

 celebrated Shipley Glen. As we near Bingiey, the scenery is extremely 

 picturesque. Deep valleys and extensive woods abound on either hand which 

 teem with interesting objects of natural history. Such delightful scenery 

 as this makes us wish that we had sufficient leisure to walk all the Avay, 

 and ramble at ease under the shade of those towering trees ; or among the 

 green meadows, while Ave gather some of the beautiful ferns and wild 

 flowers which grow so luxuriantly about here. But, we are thankful that 

 we can be taken in a few hours, by the " iron-horse " to such glorious 

 prospects as these, and thus be enabled to spend our few days holiday, to 

 the best advantage. Airedale appears to have been at one time, the bed 

 of a great river, judging from the great depth of the alluvial sand, which 

 is exposed along the sides of the railway. It must have taken a vast 

 period, to have deposited such a depth of sand, by the ordinary action of 

 rivers, over such an ai-ea as this valley. 



Professor Phillips says, thot a canoe was foimd embedded in this sand, 

 20 feet below the surface and, " In this same valley lie nearly complete 

 skeletons of the extinct hippopotamus major ; in another place, jaws and 

 bones of deers, hazel wood and nuts, some of them petrified. Perhaps 

 man was contemporary with this extinct hippopotamus." As we know 

 that the liippopotamus was accompanied by the rhinoceros, mastodon, 

 tapir, boar, horse, ox, hytena, the great cave bear and other Avild and 

 savage animals ; if the old Briton, the oAATier of the said canoe, was really 

 contemporary with those ferocious beasts, he must indeed liave had a hard 

 struggle for "existence." "For" as another writer says, "if he 

 es.sayed to travel by rivers, lie had to run the risk of being swamped in his 

 canoe, by herds of river-horses ; or if he went by land, there was danger 

 of being trampled to death by immense elephants, gored by rhinoceros, 

 tossed by bulls, two or three times as large as any prize ox, with the con- 

 tingency of having to take up his quarters in the lair of some monstrous 

 hyaena or cave-bear." 



Poor felloAv, we thought as we dashed along at the rate of ten or 

 fifteen miles an hour, what a contrast between his day and ours ? We 

 certainly, have no desire to go back to those good old times, 



" Ere the base laws of servitmlc began 

 When wild in woods the noble savage ran," 



80 often extolled by young poets and Utopian politicians. We arrived at 



