i 7 9 

 AT THE FOOT OF THE WOLDS. 



S. A. ADAMSON, F.G.S., 



Hon. Sec. of the Leeds Geological Association, of the Yorkshire Boulder Committee, 



and of the Geological Section of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, etc. 



The Easter Monday of 1889 will long be remembered by those 

 members of the Leeds Geological Association who were present, for 

 the brilliancy of the weather, the practical character of the work 

 engaged in, and the congenial manner in which the day was spent. 

 It was decided that the excursion should be to Brough-on-the-Humber 

 and vicinity, so that the Post-tertiary gravels and also some of the 

 Oolitic rocks (the latter of which dip under the Chalk of the Wolds) 

 could be examined. 



The excursion was under the leadership of Mr. B. Holgate, F.G.S., 

 and the members had also the utmost kindness shown to them by 

 Mr. Lyon, of Castle House, the proprietor of the gravel pits which 

 the party had travelled to see. The Hull Geological Society 

 had also decided to join the Leeds hammermen, and thus when the 

 two Societies met upon the platform at Brough there was quite a 

 formidable array of geologists bent upon learning as much as possible 

 of the nature and conditions of deposition of the strata at the foot 

 of the Wolds. Mr. F. F. Walton, F.G.S., the President of the Hull 

 Geological Society, who has minutely examined every section in the 

 district, was present, and the information he so freely imparted 

 during the day added materially to the value of the excursion. 



As the train sped on in the beautiful April morning many familiar 

 scenes were pointed out ; the Newthorpe Quarries, Sherburn Church, 

 Brayton Barf, and Hambleton Haugh were passed, and soon we were 

 passing the fine old abbey of Selby. Crossing the Ouse, the 

 remnants of Wressel Castle on the one side, and the lofty tower of 

 Howden Church on the other, were noted. The calm broad estuary 

 of the Humber looked magnificent with the gleaming sunlight thrown 

 across it, and presently the party, in the best of spirits, alighted at 

 Brough in the midst of introductions and congratulations. They 

 passed through the village and ascended the low eminence of Mill 

 Hill, on the top of which a gravel-pit has been excavated. This 

 hill is really an Oolitic outlier, capped by Post-Tertiary gravels, and 

 there is a tract of low-lying ground between it and the Wolds. 

 Mr. Lyon took charge of the party here, and conducted them to 

 different parts of the pit, where he informed them that an immense 

 curved tusk of the mammoth {Ehphas primigenius) had been 

 discovered. It was said to have been about 13 ft. in length when 



June 1889. 



