536 G. W. LampJugh — The Bridlington Shell-bed^ etc. 



them to be closely related to the well-known shell-bed, from which 

 many years ago so many glacial shells were obtained, and which has 

 long been hidden behind a sea-defence a short distance southward. 

 This deposit, which was called by its discoverers the " Bridlington 

 Crag," has always been of great interest to glacialists, but seems to 

 have been the subject of much misconception ; and the object of this 

 paper is, by re-examining the old evidence, and bringing forward 

 new, to render our knowledge of the bed more complete. 



The Bridlington Ckag. — When we examine the published de- 

 scriptions of this shell-bed, we find they differ in several important 

 particulars. 



Its discoverer in 1835, Mr. W. Bean, describes it^ as "a deposit 

 oi fragile and brolcen shells "^ .... a, heterogeneous mass, only 

 a few yards long and as many high, composed of sand, clay, marine 

 shells, and pebbles of every description ; chalk and flint pebbles were, 

 as might be expected, most abundant." 



Prof. Phillips, who examined it shortly after,^ " found the shelly 

 bed .... very irregular in its upper surface, covered by 

 Boulder-drift, and composed of darh sandy clay with small black 

 pebbles, and chalk and flint fragments, mixed with a multitude of 

 shells, many brolcen, and except Pholades and CyprincB, few bivalves 

 having their valves together. I saw no Boulder-clay beneath ; upwards 

 it seemed not sharply defined from the ordinary drift without 

 shells, but yet distinct, so as not to pass gradually into that 

 heterogeneous mass. . . . My own investigations led me to 

 adopt the view that it was a shell-bed as early as the beginning of 

 the Glacial Period (possibly Preglacial), which had been disturbed 

 and displaced bodily by the pressure which attended the boulder- 

 deposits, and not stratified by dispersion under ordinary water action. 

 This may be expressed by the term couche remaniee." 



Dr. H. C. Sorby examined the bed for foraminifera, and published 

 in 1858* a list of them (Appendix B), with an account of the bed. 

 His description is the most circumstantial and complete. He says, — 



"The place where the crag was then best exposed was at the 

 bottom of the clifi", somewhat north of the town. It appeared to 

 me to be a number of small beds of sand and sandy clay amongst the 

 Boulder-clay of the drift, which occurs both below and above the part 

 with shells, also itself containing many erratic pebbles like those 

 in the drift. Though some few of the shells are found elsewhere, 

 yet they are most numerous about a quarter of a mile north of the 

 pier. The section there exhibited, at the bottom, bluish clay with 

 pebbles of chalk and flint, as well as of other rocks transported from 

 a distance, passing upwards into similar clay without pebbles. 

 Above this was a very variable deposit of sandy beds and clay, 

 similar to that below, as well as some that is brown and quite like 

 the ordinary Boulder-clay of the district, except in containing shells. 



1 Phillips' Geology of Yorkshire, 3rd edition, p. 86. 



"^ The italics throughout the extracts are mine. 



3 loc. eit. p. 87. 



* Proc, West Eiding Geol. and Polytechnic Soc. vol. iii. p. 559. 



