HOLDERNESS. 51 



but those which have been brought from the nearer points of the chalk 

 range have yielded much less to attrition. Some attention is required 

 to the original hardness of the stones : we find solid masses of ironstone 

 and quartz much less worn than granite ; limestone less rounded than 

 millstone grit ; and flint with uninjured angles, whilst chalk and mag- 

 nesian limestone have lost their original surfaces. 



Few substances originally soft have been carried by the deluge to a 

 great distance, in a solid form. The sandstones of the west and north- 

 west part of Yorkshire, are plentiful in the gravel of the vale of York ; 

 but only the hard " galliard" of Leeds and Bradford, and the solid mill- 

 stone grit of the moors, can be recognised in the clay of Holderness. 

 This clay is itself, no doubt, an aggregate principally of the particles into 

 which the softer strata exposed to the ravages of the flood, have been 

 resolved. Its vast bulk need not surprise us, when we remember the 

 numerous vallies which have been deepened by the deluge, and consider 

 how large a portion of the mass removed was clay and disintegrated 

 sand. We might have expected to find these finer particles at the top, 

 and the solid fragments of rocks lying beneath, according to their indivi- 

 dual magnitude and weight. As nothing of this kind is observable, we 

 must suppose the flood to have moved with such extraordinary violence, 

 that its spoils, when heaped together, were little influenced in their ar- 

 rangement by the direct force of gravitation. 



The ancient organic remains which lie scattered in this clay, must be 

 considered in two very distinct groups : those which were removed by 

 the deluge from rocks in which they had been previously deposited ; 

 and those which belonged to animals then existing on the earth, or in 

 the sea. To the former class appertain lithophytous corals from the 

 mountain limestone, fossil plants from the coal series, ammonites, belem- 

 nites, pectines, and many other shells from the lias ; and belemnites, 

 echini, and inocerami, from the chalk. These remains furnish very 

 important evidence towards determining the direction of diluvial 

 currents. 



11 2 



