$45 
LINCOLNSHIRE COAST BOULDERS. 
F, M. BURTON, F.L.S., F.G.S., 
Highfield, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. 
In dealing with this subject Mr. Harker, in his recent article in 
‘The Naturalist,’ on ‘The Southward Movement of Beach- 
material across the Humber Gap,’ gives an explanation in favour 
of his view which requires attention and consideration, He 
abandons ‘the powerful tidal scour,’ and, ‘while not denying 
the possibility that some of the boulders on the Lincolnshire 
coast may have a different source,’ he still adheres ‘to the view 
that many, and probably the large majority, of them are derived 
from the waste of the Holderness cliffs. 
As I understand it, he allows that the material from the 
Yorkshire coast cannot pass the Humber current at the present 
day (and of this the existence of the narrow bank of shingle at 
Spurn Point is a sufficient proof), but he raises the hypothesis 
that this shingle bank, now some three miles long and only 
some 300 years old (for it did not exist, he says, when Camden 
described the locality in 1586), is merely a repetition of other 
banks of a similar nature, which have been formed from time to 
time in the same situation, and which have been successively 
breached by the river, near the point of their junction with the 
land (the neck as he terms it), allowing the current to resume 
its former course, and thus transferring the material collected in 
the north to the south of the river Humber. 
Now what proof there is of this ever having occurred he does 
not say; but, supposing it to be an authenticated fact, would 
the material so situated ever be able to reach the Lincolnshire 
shore? Certainly not, I think, unless the coast in question in 
former days differed altogether from its present character. 
It is difficult, of course, to speak with any precision as to 
what has taken place on land surfaces during long-past pees. 
as such surfaces are necessarily continually changing; but, t 
all appearance, the contour, depth, and nature of the jest 
shire coast has (speaking generally and allowing for denudation) 
continued the same as it is at the present time for ages past ; 
ever since the Trent flowed in its old course into or over what is 
now the Wash; before the time when the dominant Humber 
captured it: a time which takes us back to the far off Glacial 
period. 
As regards Mr. Harker’s reference to Camden I have not the 
November 1899. 
