328 EEroET— 1888. 



Report of the Committee, consisting of Mr. J. W. Davis, Mr. W. 

 Cash, Dr. H. Hicks, Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, Mr. Clement Reid, 

 Dr. H. Woodward, and Mr. T. Boynton, appointed for the pur- 

 pose of investigating an Ancient Sea-beach near Bridlington 

 Quay. ' (Dratun up by Gr. W. Lamplugh, Secretary.) 



Your Commitfee report tha,t, having obtained permission of the lord of 

 the manor, the Rev. Yarbargh Lloyd-Greame, they commenced the prac- 

 tical work of the exploration on June 29 last by employing labourers to 

 carry further the excavation in the cliff at Sewerby begun last 3'ear by 

 the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, continuing this work 

 through the month of July and until the end of the first week in August, 

 with sometimes three and sometimes four workmen, under the personal 

 supervision of Messrs. Boynton, Reid, and Lamplugh. During this time 

 the deposits banked against the buried cliff of chalk have been wholly 

 removed for the distance of 24 feet to a breadth of 30 feet, and partially 

 for the further distance of 12 feet, and from the excavated material a 

 large number of the bones and teeth of mammals have been obtained, 

 together with remains of birds and fish and a few shells of land and marine 

 mollusca. 



Several borings have also been put down between Sewerby and Brid- 

 lington Quay, with boring rods belonging to the Geological Survey, 

 which were kindly placed at our disposal ; and in this way we have 

 obtained important evidence as to the southward and seaward extension 

 of the deposits and their relation to the Glacial beds. 



The excavation has now been suspended because of the great thick- 

 ness of incoherent sand which, as the beds recede into the cliff, is capped 

 with heavy boulder clay, and is apt to come down in sudden falls, thus 

 rendering dangerous any further removal of the old beach unless a large 

 mass of the superficial beds were first thrown off ; and this, with the funds 

 at their disposal, your Committee have not been able to undertake, and 

 are, indeed, doubtful of the expediency of doing. A short gallery has, 

 however, been driven along the face of the old cliff for about 12 feet 

 beyond the open working. 



The following account of the deposits will show the results obtained 

 up to the present time. 



History and Literature. — These deposits, for which we propose the 

 name of ' the Sewerby Cliff-beds,' have nearly always been hidden in the 

 cliff-foot under a long talus of drift slipped from above, and remained 

 undiscovered until the winter of 1883-4, when your reporter's attention 

 was drawn to them by a fisherman, who had noticed two bones in a 

 portion of the cliff recently laid bare by storms. The writer knew that 

 the tusk of an elephant had been found some years before near this place, 

 but until this time he could not find the bed from which it had been ob- 

 tained, though in his examination of the section he noticed the abruptness 

 with which the chalk ended, and, in a paper on the Speeton Shell-bed,' 

 mentioned the discovery of the tusk and suggested that it might have 

 come from some bed below the drift. 



It was at first believed that the two bones formed part of a skeleton, 



' Geological Magazine, Dec. II. vol. viii. p. 174. 



