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Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast. 297 
cession of breaks connecting the different members, and showing 
the whole to be, not a series of formations, but one grand for- 
mation.—The effects of the denudations of the strata lead to the 
same conclusion; for the chalk, the upper shale and the oolite, 
have been swept away together between Speeton and Filey; and 
the aluminous beds and red sandstone have been involved in the 
same destruction towards the Tees. 
‘¢ (2.) Most of the breaks or dislocations have taken place when 
the strata were but half consolidated; so hard as to break, yet 
so soft as also to bend. ‘his fact deserves particular notice, as 
being, in our opinion, the most decisive evidence of the point in 
dispute ; especially when viewed in connection with the fact last 
stated, and with the remarks made above (§ 12) on the indura- 
tion of the strata. Had the strata been of different ages, we 
should have found at the breaks that pass through several mem- 
bers of the series, indications of the greater hardness of the lower 
beds, and softness of the upper, at the time when these breaks 
occurred, But, instead of this, we see in the bends, undulations, 
and contortions, accompanying the breaks, indubitable proofs, 
that the beds which are now the hardest were capable of being 
bent at the era of these dislocations, and the lowest as much as 
the highest. The undulations in the ironstone and hard sandstone 
on both sides of Scarborough ; those in the sandstone at Haiburn 
wyke; those in the hard bands of the aluminous strata at Peak 
and Robin Hood’s Bay; and those in the dogger near Saltwick, 
on the east side of Whitby harbour, and in the sandstone on the 
west side, may be quoted as examples. ‘They show, that as the 
great breaks on the coast run through the entire mass of the 
_ Strata, wherever they occur, so they must have taken place when 
every part of the mass was somewhat flexible. In some instances, 
indeed, the curvature of a bed is partly owing to small cracks or 
rents; but independent of such cracks, there is a real bending 
of the mass of the stratum.—Even the denudations present ap- 
pearances, indicating that they must have occurred when the 
strata were but half consolidated ; for it is dificult to explain, on 
any other principle, the extent to which the hard strata have thus 
been demolished.—These facts it is impossible to reconcile with 
the formation, system. 
*< (3.) The conformity and close succession of the strata, viewed 
in connection with their contents, also furnish insurmountable 
difficulties in the way of the system.—The members of the strata 
succeed each other so closely, and with so little appearance of 
interruptions, or long intervals, between their deposition, that 
the abettors of this theory must find it difficult, if not impossible, 
to determine where one formation ends, and another begins. The 
members of the series often run into one another. The chalk 
Vol, 59, No, 288, April 1822, P p might 
