32 DESCRIPTION OF THE STRATA. 



derness coast are not the continuation of the Hull bed, but merQ 

 patches, occurring here and there. These patches have not only no 

 connection with the Hull morass, but no connection with one another. 

 The largest of them occur where the cliff is very low, or where there 

 can scarcely be said to be any cliff at all ; and those small patches 

 which occur where the cliff is lofty, as between Sandley Mere and 

 Hornsea, are not found at the foot of the cliff, or within reach of the 

 tide, but always a few feet below the surface. Fragments of this 

 kind of bog may indeed be found occasionally at the base of the high- 

 est cliffs ; but this is only where they have fallen down from their 

 proper bed. ^ 



An instance of this was observed by the authors nearly opposite 

 a place called Grimston Garth, not far from Aldborough. There, at 

 the foot of a cliff about 100 feet high, they met with masses of bog 

 earth, with portions of ti'ees, branches, roots, and other vegetable 

 .substances. Some parts of these masses, in a half dried state, might 

 be split into thin flexible pieces, forming a kind of elastic bitumen. 

 On examining the cliff, it Mas found, that these masses had been 

 washed down by the rains from a bed of peat which lies seven or 

 eight feet below the surface, about a foot in thickness, and extending 

 horizontally along the face of the cliff a number of yards. The bed 

 does not appear to reach a great way inward ; but it may have ex- 

 tended outward to a considerable distance, when the sea had not 

 encroached so far on the land ; and probably the bi'oadest and deep- 

 est part of it has long ago been washed away. This peat bog abounds 

 with decayed branches of hazel, and other shrubs; and with the 

 leaves and roots of vegetables, particularly reeds or rushes, the seeds 

 of which are also very discernible. Over the peat lies a bed of light 

 coloured marl, of a fine texture. In some places it is tinged with a 

 beautiful light blue, in small specks, exactly the colour of those mi- 

 nute insects that are found in myriads floating on the surface of 



