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COAST EROSION.* 
J. J. BURTON, F.G.S. 
COAST erosion is not confined to Yorkshire nor to our British 
coasts. 
All land areas are subject thereto. Inland surfaces are 
carried down the streams so that the sea is swallowing the 
hills and eating up the valleys. All ocean fringes are not 
equally eroded. Some very little, others considerably. Some 
are gaining. 
Much attention has been given to this subject in recent 
years, but sea encroachment is as old as land formation, and 
man’s fight against it as old as civilisation. 
The coast of Holderness is probably the most seriously 
affected in this country, and the subject is therefore very 
appropriate for a Hull gathering of Geologists. 
From investigations made by Professor Phillips 60 years 
ago, by our President, Mr. Sheppard, recently, and by a Royal 
Commission, we find that the Manor of Tharlesthorpe provided 
pasturage for 1,274 sheep in the thirteenth century and yielded 
annually 300 quarters of grain. The whole area disappeared 
in the fifteenth century. Ravenser once returned two members 
to Parliament and has an important place in history. Where 
it stood is to-day unknown. 
Auburn, Hartburn, Hyde, Frismersk, Redmayr, Pennys- 
merk, Upsal, Pottersfleet, Owthorne, are now merely place 
names without a site. Withernsea and Dimlington are rapidly 
joining the group. Inthe North Riding, as well as in the East 
Riding, the sea is claiming for its greedy maw, chunks from 
Sandsend, Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay, Scarborough, and on | 
to Filey. Further south along the Suffolk coast, in spite of 
protective works, the loss is considerable. In the Channel on 
the Hampshire coast the waste of cliff is enormous, and there 
is keen competition between it and Holderness for premier 
place in spending power. 
We might take a tour with the tides in their ebb and flow . 
round our coasts and observe the changes going on, but time 
limits confine me to a brief consideration of the causes which 
are producing the effects we see or could see. 
As a general rule it is the older and better compacted rocks 
which offer the greater resistance, but this resistance varies . 
inversely as the rocks are fissured, irregularly bedded, or dip 
shoreward, and is affected by many other conditions such as 
faults, permeability, solubility, springs, surface drainage, nature 
* Paper read at the meeting of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union ' 
(Geological Section) at Hull, November 7th, 1914. It was illustrated by 
several lantern slides. 
Naturalist,. 
