of lite Yorkshire Coast. 2\\ 



contains in its fissures great quantities of calc spar, in beautiful 

 lenticular crystals, about an inch in diameter, adhering to the 

 rock by their edges. Fine specimens of this kind of spar may be 

 seen in the rock on the north side of Scarborough castle. 



In the limestone hills are numerous subterraneous fissures and 

 chasms. There are no apertures to admit our entrance into them, 

 as in the Craven lime rocks; hut their existence is demonstrated 

 by their effects, particularly in the absorption of water. In these 

 hills it is rare to meet with a spring, till we come down to where 

 then- bases join the plain on the south ; their dales and deep cuts 

 are streamless and dry, except where rivulets flow through them 

 fron^ the hills of the third range: the waters are wholly absorbed 

 by the fissures of the strata, and running down in these subter- 

 raneous channels at last burst out at the foot of the hills in springs 

 of mimense size, or rather in whole rivers. At Keldhead, near 

 Pickering, the Costa rises from the earth in one vast volume of 

 waters: at Brompton, a river bursts at once from the caverns of 

 the limestone, and is collected at its very source into a large mill- 

 pond, so that it drives a mill in descending from the ledee of rocks 

 out of which it issues: and similar phaenomena are observed at 

 Ebberston, and other places along the foot of this range.— Nor 

 do these cavernous hills absorb their own waters only, they also 

 swallow up the rivers and streams which pass through their dales 

 from the hills beyond them; for these streams, on their arrival 

 at the hmestone beds, suddenly disappear, and afterwards rise 

 again on the south side of the hills, in a line with the springs 

 which issue from their bases: at the same time a channel is left 

 above ground, in which a portion of the water flows during win- 

 ter, or in occasional floods, when the subterraneous channel is 

 insufficient to admit the whole. The Rye sinks a little above 

 Hehnsley, and rises at a small distance from its proper diannel, 

 about a mile below: the Riccal disappears about a mile above 

 the new bridge on the Hehnsley and Kirkbv Moorside road, and 

 rises at Haram, a mile below, a few yards from its channel: 

 Hodge beck descends into the rock a few paces below Holme 

 Caldron mill, near Kirkdale church, and bursts up again at How- 

 keld-head *, on the south side of the road, a mile west of Kirkbv 

 Moorside, and about a quarter of a mile east of its channel: the 

 Uove, or Dow, sinks about twenty yards below Yawdwath mill, 

 and after running near half a mile under ground, resumes its 

 old channel about a furlong above Keldholni bridge; Hutton 

 beck, or Catter beck, disappears about a mile north of Catter 

 bridge, on the Kirkby MoOrside and Pickering road, and starts up 



• Keld-head means Spring-head; How-kdd-hcRd is Deep-jprine-headl, a 

 name fitly given to that frightful ba^in from whenc* thi, rim boilf up 



^ '^ sgaia 



