326 Burton: Lincolnshire Coast Boulders. 
work before me, but might not the author have treated the bank 
eet in existence when he described the locality, then that must 
ve been one of the periods referred to when the spit had been 
saicne at the neck and the material swept away by the river 
current. And, surely, had this been the case, there would have 
been some existing record at the time of the event; for unlike 
the building up of the bank, which would be of comparatively 
slow growth, the sudden breaching of the structure would, 
I should imagine, be more or less of a catastrophic nature. 
Then supposing again the theory to be true, would not the 
river, in resuming its old course, be more likely to carry the 
shingle. by its broad current out to sea instead of banking it up 
on the south ? 
Mr. Clement Reid, as Mr. Harker reminds us, ‘ points to the 
existence of a very large shingle beach near Donna Nook, on 
the south side of the Humber mouth,’ which he, Mr. Harker, 
says ‘can only have been derived from the other side of the 
estuary ;’ and he adds, ‘there are many vanished Spurn points 
to account for, and it cannot be doubted that the material from 
them is scattered along the coast from the Humber to the Wash 
at least.” To my mind, however, there is a great deal of doubt 
as to this. | 
should not this large shingle beach have been derived 
from the Lincolnshire coast : y rely on a ‘Deus ex machina’ 
for the existence of Lincolnshire boulders on the Lincolnshire 
coast when the material itself is found there? No one can deny 
the existence of boulder deposits all over the land bordering 
this coast to the east of the wolds, where they lie under the 
post-glacial deposits and are exposed in many places; and no 
one can doubt that cliffs like those at Holderness once skirted 
the shore, of which the cut-down cliff at Cleethorpes is the only 
remnant. And is it not more likely that this bank at Donna 
Nook is the result of the wearing away of these cliffs by the 
current on the Lincolnshire side than of its being derived from 
the Yorkshire cliffs on the other side of the river ? Its position, 
too, would confirm this, for it lies just where one would expect 
to find it, if brought down by the river on the Lincolnshire side ; 
as the land at Donna Nook forms a sort of promontory, beyond 
which the coast line takes a more southerly course 
Mr. Harker further asks what has become of the millions of 
tons of material swept southwards along the Holderness coast 
: Naturalist, 
