56 REMINISCENCES OF 



"Yorkshire Coast." The competence of Young to 

 write such a book may be judged by the following 

 quotation from it : 



" Instead of assigning such high antiquity to the 

 " whole of the strata, why may we not rather 

 " suppose that a great proportion of them, particu- 

 " larly such as contain organic remains, might be 

 " formed at the era of the Deluge ? We are far 

 " from adopting on this subject the crude opinions 

 " of Dr. Woodward ; yet we are persuaded that he 

 "and Mr. Howard and others who ascribe to the 

 " Deluge the principal changes which the crust of 

 "our globe has undergone, in so far come nearer 

 " the truth than those who would throw back those 

 " changes into long ages that preceded the creation 

 "of man, involving them in the darkness of the 

 "chaos." This quotation is a fair example of the 

 prejudiced rubbish with which the true men of 

 science had to contend. At the same time, Bird, a 

 most amiable artist, prepared some coarse but other- 

 wise recognisable figures of many of the more 

 common of the East Yorkshire fossils, and the 

 diagrams of the strata from Spurn Head to Hartle- 

 pool gave a fair outline of the coast, with its rocky 

 foreshore and its " Hinter " land of Yorkshire hills. 

 Contemporaneously with Young and Bird, John 

 Phillips, a youth of very different calibre, the 

 nephew and constant companion of William Smith, 

 was laying the foundations of a most profound know- 

 ledge of the same subject. At this time there 



