104 DESCRIPTION OF THE COAST. 



a few well-defined rocks, than by gathering loads of ordinary specimens. 

 We find mixed up in this diluvial clay, fragments of rocks belonging to 

 the granitic and slate series, as well as to the independent and secondary 

 formations : and it is often possible to determine the districts, and even 

 the particular hills from which they have been drifted. Thus we trace 

 back to Shap fell its porphyritic granite ; to Carrock fell its sienite and 

 greenstone ; to the Grasmere mountains their amygdaloidal gray wacke ; 

 to Kirby Stephen its calcareous breccia ; to Teesdale its greenstone ; and 

 to Western Yorkshire its limestone, sandstone, and coal. But it is from 

 Durham that we have derived the concretionary limestone of Building 

 hill, and we must seek in Scotland, and perhaps Norway, for the original 

 sites of our garnet slate, porphyries, amygdaloids, hornblende, diallage, 

 and hypersthene, and a still greater distance has been travelled over by 

 the fragments of Labrador felspar. Generally speaking, we may say 

 the waters which brought together the heterogeneous mass of diluvium 

 which loads the coast of Yorkshire, flowed from various points of the 

 compass between N. and W. 



Besides these effects of diluvial streams flowing from great distances, 

 we trace the results of less extensive currents. The wasted cliffs of 

 Robin Hood's Bay have probably furnished the numerous lias and marl- 

 stone fossils which abound near the spaw at Scarborough, and in the 

 cliffs of Holderness ; sandstones from the neighbouring moors lie on the 

 cliffs between Scalby and Cloughton Wyke ; and the chalk rocks of 

 Flamborough have been scattered in fragments through the clay cliffs 

 from Bridlington to Hornsea. The remarks on page 50, as to the com- 

 parative degree of attrition of the boulders, are applicable to the whole 

 coast of Yorkshire. The largest masses are always observed to be 

 granite, mica slate, greenstone, or mountain limestone. Of these rocks, 

 large fragments, which have fallen from the ruined cliffs, may be seen at 

 intervals near the low-water mark, opposite Dimlington height, under the 

 Danish dyke, and on the summit of the beacon cliff at Flamborough, on 

 the shores of Filey, Scarborough, Robin Hood's Bay, Skinningrave, and 

 Saltburn. It is not even uricommon to see many such boulders together, 

 each weighing perhaps a ton 



