ALLUVIAL COVERING. 25 



Dr. Storer, in the close of his account of this spring, communi- 

 cated to the Royal Society, had suggested, that this ebbing and 

 flowing fountain might have some connection with the intermitting 

 springs called the Gipsies; an idea which he could not have enter- 

 tained, had he been properly acquainted with the history and situa- 

 tion of these springs. A writer in the Philosophical Journal, evidently 

 less acquainted with the country, catches at this unfounded notion, 

 and assuming that the stratum of clay and substratum of cretaceous 

 gravel, found at Bridlington harbour, extend over all Holderness, 

 nay over the Wolds too, beyond the Gipsies, alleges that the latter 

 "will be found mere perforations of the substratum of clay; and one 

 and all of them at some seasons, although distant from the sea, to 

 be more or less ebbing and flowing springs ;" that the pressure of the 

 tide upon the elastic bed of clay occasions the flowing of the springs, 

 and the removal of that pressure the ebbing of them; nay, "that the 

 whole bed (of clay), extending from Flamborough Head to Spum 

 Point, will be found to rise and fall with the ebbing and flowing of 

 every tide "!* 



These assertions are not only in direct opposition to facts, but, 

 as far as regards the last of them, so contrary to the nature of 

 things, that it is difficult to believe, that a writer who has produced 

 so many judicious papers on other subjects, could be serious in ad- 

 vancing them. Alas! poor Holderness, hard is thy fate! Other 

 lands may be visited with earthquakes once in half a century ; but thou 

 art doomed to suffer an earthquake twice a day; — an earthquake 

 which heaves thy bowels, and makes thee vomit out thy waters, even 

 at the distance of many miles from thy coast ! Tough indeed must 



* Philos. Journal, L. p. 81, 82. Another writer in Ihe same volume, p. 267, 268, gravely 

 iieinaiks, liiat this supposed daily earthquake does not extend to Hull. He had resided there 

 several months; and could attest Ihatdiirino all that period the town stood still. Had he been 

 stationed on the Holderness coast, he might have borne testimony, that the land there is also 

 ttrrajinna. 



G 



