ALLUVIAL COVERING. 29 



The celebrated Scarborough springs, whose medicinal virtues 

 began to be noticed about two hundi'ed years ago, issue from the 

 lower part of a high alluvial qliff; consisting chiefly of brown clay, 

 with sand and gravel. The clay contains vast quantities of imbedded 

 nodules and fragments of stone of all descriptions, among which 

 aluminous schistus and ironstone appear to predominate. The 

 springs, which are two in number, percolate through this clay, but 

 probably have their true sources in the gravel, of which an immense 

 mass, containing numerous fragments of rocks, is seen in an adjacent 

 part of the cliff. The falling down of the brown clay has in a great 

 measure displaced or covered the gravel beds, at the spot where the 

 springs appear, and thus concealed their real soui-ces. In the year 

 1737, a portion of the cliff, containing near an acre of pasture ground, 

 with the cattle grazing upon it, sunk perpendicularly several yards; 

 on which occasion, it would seem, the thick bed of brown clay forced 

 from beneath it the sand and gravel beds, which were consequently 

 protruded outwards at the bottom of the cliff, forming a ridge above 

 100 yards long, 26 broad, and 6 or 7 high. The staith which then 

 secured the wells with the buildings belonging to them, coming within 

 the limits of this ridge, rose with it in one entire mass 12 feet above 

 its former position, and at the same time was protruded forward 

 about 20 yards. The springs, as might be expected, were instantly 



tumulus not far from the springs. His words are as follows: In provincia quoqiie Deirorura, 

 baud procul a loco nativitalis mesE, res mirabilis conti^it, quam a puero cognovi. Est vicus 

 aliquot a mari Orientali miliariis distans, juxta quern famosae illse aquae quas vulgo Vipse vooant, 

 nuraerosa scaturigine e terra prosiliunt, non quidem jugiter, sed annis interpositis, et facto 

 torrente non iiiodico, per (oca humiliora in mare labuntur: quae quidem cum siccantur, signum 

 bonum est; nam earum fluxus futurae famis incommodum non fallaciter porteudere dicitur. 

 G. Neubrigen. 1. I. c. 28. Perhaps Vipse ought to be read Vips«, witb the proper Latin termi- 

 nation. The distinction betweeu these two terminations is seldom observed in ancient manuscripts. 

 Plot, in his History of Oxfordshire, p. 30, mentions some intermitting springs, which are 

 said, like the Gipsies, to be always dry in fertile years, their flowing being considered as the 

 harbinger of dearth. 



