ALUM SHALE. 149 



being in some spots higher on the one side of the break, and in others 

 on the opposite side. In one or two instances, we find two breaks 

 meeting in a point, near low water; and instead of crossing each 

 other, the one is arrested in its progress on meeting the other, an 

 angular portion of the strata being inclosed between them. Where 

 the dip of the strata is altered by the breaks, it is curious to observe 

 the disrupted beds meeting each other from different directions, and 

 at various angles. But the most singular phenomenon exhibited here, 

 is a break where the strata on the opposite sides do not correspond, 

 the one having, at the time of the dislocation, moved several feet be- 

 fore the other. Such horizontal movements may have taken place at 

 several other slips without being perceived ; but here the fact is strik- 

 ingly obvious, from the arrangement of the strata into hard beds or 

 crusts, rising in ridges, with soft shale between them, hollowed into 

 long furrows : for at this slip, the broken edges of the hard shelving 

 strata, instead of lyitig opposite those from which they hiave been torn, 

 are opposite the hollow furrows on the other side. As the ridges are 

 nearly at an equal distance from each other, and the horizontal 

 movement of the beds on one side is about half that distance, this 

 curious alternation goes on as far as the break can be traced, the end 

 of each hard bed on the one side being opposite to the soft shale on 

 the other. 



On the north side of Robin Hood's Bay, the strata having acquired 

 a northerly dip, continue to sink in that direction, as far as the 

 northern part of Hawsker Bottoms, (Opposite Gnipe-houe. In the 

 lofty cliffs occupying this space, the upper beds, that are disconti- 

 nued on the north side of Peak, successively make their appearance. 

 The Staiths beds, consisting chiefly of two thick beds of sandstone, 

 parted by a bed of shale about 30 feet thick, first' appear in the top 

 of the cliff, not' far from the village ; and descending gradually, 

 as the lowest shale sinks vmder the sea, they come down io the beach, 



2 p 



