GEOLOGY. 35 



alternations, with fossil plants; 20 feet white gritstone ; 6 to 10 

 shale, 20 feet of gritstone with ironstone and fossil plants, 10 of 

 shale. 



I. The Dogger Beds (best seen at Blea Wyke), 70 feet : 30 

 feet firm-grained, yellow, irony sandstone with layers of pebbles 

 and numerous shells ; 20 feet softer sandstone with irony masses 

 of shells and 20 feet argillaceous fissile sandstone, also with 

 shells. These last are probably homotaxial with the Midford 

 Sands, which are passage beds into the Lias from the Oolite. 



The thick Middle and Lower Estuarine, consisting chiefly of 

 sandstone and shale beds, form the cap rock of most of the 

 Cleveland hills and in most places, as far as their termination at 

 Saltburn, cover the Lias in the coast cliffs. This set of beds 

 may be seen inland forming scars at Arncliffe woods near Egton 

 Bridge, Danby Crag, Huntcliffe, Roseberry Topping, Wainstones, 

 in Bilsdale, Newtondale and many other localities. North of 

 the Esk it attains an elevation of 988 feet in Danby Beacon, 

 and 1057 feet in Roseberry Topping. The same shells that are 

 found in the Dogger beds at the Peak are met with inland in 

 Goathland dale and in the escarpment of the Cleveland hills 

 opposite Stokesley. The coal seam of the Middle Estuarine, 

 which is shewn on the coast north of Cloughton Wyke, is known 

 and sometimes worked in most of the southern dales of the 

 Esk district. The calcareous beds which intervene between the 

 two thick masses of Upper and Middle Estuarines cannot be 

 traced very distinctly amongst the moorlands, but they are known 

 in some of the southern dales of the Esk and also in Common- 

 dale and Scugdale. The Upper Estuarines, and especially the 

 massive bottom bed, or Moor Grit, of the Lower Oolite series 

 form the higher levels of all the moorland mass along the line of 

 watershed between the Esk, the Leven, and the Derwent, the 

 culminating points of which attain an elevation of 978 feet in 

 Lilhow Cross, 1419 feet in Loosehoe Moor, 1489 feet in Burton 

 Head, and 1427 feet in Dromanby Bank. This summit of 

 drainage is in fact the line of an anticlinal axis of these strata, 



Feb. i8Sg. 



