of Fossil Bones at North Cliff, Yorkshire. 7 



Ft. Inch. 



1 — 6 Compressed plants of recent marshes, in high preser- 

 vation, being genei'ally uncarbonized, and of a green- 

 ish straw-colour: among them a jointed plant closely 

 resembling that found at ClifF. 



1. Blue clay without spots. 

 Red rock niarl. 



The trees are*, oak, birch, and hazel ; they have fallen in 

 various directions : the roots, from which the trunks have been 

 broken, in some instances are standing upright, but want, as 

 I was informed, the tap root. No marks of tools have been 

 observed upon any of the trees ; the opinion of the superin- 

 tendant of the work is, that they had been drifted or rather 

 had sunk into their present situation from an adjoining rise, 

 which he thinks was the ancient bank of the Tees. There 

 can be no doubt that the argillaceous bed above them has 

 been formed by the river, which would even now cover the 

 surface at high tides if it were not banked out. 



Here I conceive we have a deposit which may be compared 

 in some respects to that of Cliff"; and here also I found abun- 

 dance of diluvian pebbles, distinguished only from those above 

 described by the circumstance that the mountain limestone 

 contains the Madrepores which are found in that rock in the 

 county of Durham. But the material difference between the 

 two cases is this; that the diluvian stones are here embedded 

 in the red rock marl, which is the substratum whereon this 

 alluvium also reposes; and they had penetrated the marl, 

 which is here extremely hard and solid, to the depth of at 

 least four feet, to which depth I saw it worked. So that at 

 Stockport we have the same gravel buried under the alluvium 

 which at Cliff" is laid above it, and we have here no diluvian 

 stones in the upper clay. 



To what a height this gravel has been carried in the vale 

 of Cleveland, I had an opportunity of observing under the 

 northern escarpment of the hills near Stokesby, where I found 

 a bed of it containing pebbles of mountain limestone, and large 

 boulders of millstone grit mixed with specimens of the older 

 rocks, at an elevation which I calculated to be about eight 

 hundred feet above the level of the sea. 



In reviewing the whole of the subject I cannot refrain from 

 remarking, that however visionary it may appear to hope for 

 geological data sufficient to fix the chronology of the Deluge, 



♦ One of the fragtnents of oak was more than thirty feet long and about 

 tlirec feet in diameter. The wood sunk in water, but was capable of being 

 worked, and was not much cHscoIoured; its tendency to spHt on ex])osure 

 wassaid to be removed by scalding it in boiling water. 



sliould 



