86 DESCRIPTION OF THE COAST. 



the friable and rather sandy shale of Scarborough, and the tough blue 

 clay of Oxford and Wiltshire ; and the fossils of both situations are yet 

 but imperfectly known. It is probable, indeed, that my enumeration 

 of the fossils found in this stratum at Scarborough, by Messrs. Dunn, 

 Bean, Williamson, and Smith, may be found more extensive than a 

 similar catalogue of those belonging it in the south : and yet only a few 

 years have elapsed since it was discovered to contain any. 



The Kelloways rock agrees much better with its prototype both in 

 substance and organic remains. It is, indeed, seldom that specimens of 

 mixed secondary sandstones procured from neighbouring parishes, are 

 more similar than some which may be selected from this stratum in Wilt- 

 shire and Yorkshire : and so complete is the affinity of the imbedded fos- 

 sils, that it might be easy for the most practised eye to mistake the one 

 for the other. In Yorkshire,. the Kelloways rock is a mixed sandstone, 

 containing some lime and some argillaceous particles, of a grayish yellow 

 colour, changing to greenish gray Avhen wet, and to brownish yellow 

 when much impregnated with oxide of iron. The difference in its state 

 of consolidation is singular : in some places it consists of loose unaggre- 

 gated sand, containing hard, irony, and calcareous masses. At Hackness 

 alone it is worked as a building stone : it is there very soft in the quarry, 

 and may be chiselled and wrought with the utmost facility. It has, at 

 the same time, the property of hardening by exposure ; and, possessing 

 both beauty and durability, is a very valuable building stone. Its 

 durability is evinced by the condition of the stone in the ancient church 

 at Hackness, which was probably built about the end of the thirteenth 

 century, and its good effect in architecture may be seen to great advan- 

 tage in the new Church and new Museum at Scarborough, and especially 

 in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, in the con- 

 struction of which blocks of great magnitude have been employed. 



Its thickness is generally above thirty feet : the upper bed is usually 

 very thick, hard, and irony, full of gryphseaj, belemnites, &c., so as 

 to be unfit for building. In the quarry at Hackness, the ammonites 

 Calloviensis, Koanigi, sublsevis, &c. which so eminently characterise the 



