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THE EVOLUTION OF BRIDLINGTON.* 



T. SHEPPARD, F.G.S. 



(President: Geological Section, Y.N.U.). 



As we view th grand promontory — Flamborough Head — 

 from Bridlington ; or, better still, as we see it from the water, 

 and as we admire the magnificent wall of white rock at Speeton, 

 towering above us to a height of over 440 feet, we naturally 

 feel convinced that such a feature was surely there since the 

 earth was made. Centuries of wearing and battering by the 

 waves and storms seem to have made no appreciable impression. 

 If ever there were everlasting hills, surely they were here. 

 Flamborough Headland, one would think, has endured and 

 will endure all time. Yet no greater mistake could be made. 

 Here, in this part of our glorious county, as elsewhere, it can 

 safely be said that 



" The hills are shadows, and they flow 



From form to form ; and nothing stands. 

 They melt like mists, the solid lands 



Like clouds they shape themselves, and go." 



And, as we can see later, just as these seemingly solid cliffs 

 are wearing and crumbling away, so, too, were they not always 

 there. As a matter of fact, they form but quite a recent 

 chapter in the earth's history. Myriads of years had passed 

 before the Flamborough cliffs, or the beds of chalk of which 

 they are composed, were ever formed Thousands upon 

 thousands of feet of solid rock occur upon the earth's sur- 

 face, entombed in which are the remains of plants, shells, 

 insects, large reptiles, fishes innumerable, and even mammals. 

 All these had lived and died, and were buried, countless ages 

 before a single particle of the chalk forming Flamborough 

 Head came to be. These old rocks and their contents clearly 

 show to what a variety of changes the surface of the globe 

 had been subjected — old land areas with tropical forests ; warm 

 seas with coral reefs ; shallow shores ; deep oceanic oozes ; 

 rivers and estuaries ; had all existed and left their indelible 

 impressions preserved in the rocks. 



Then, and not till then, upon a rocky floor in the bed of an 

 extensive and deep ocean, the first chapter in the history of 

 Bridlington began to be written. All this, as has been pointed 

 out, at a late period in the earth's history. And though, at 

 Bridlington, we can trace what took place aeons before man 

 ever appeared on the earth at all, still we must look upon our- 

 selves as representing merely the final chapters in a great 

 history. 



* Read at the Bridlington meeting of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union. 



Naturalist, 



