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THE SOURCE OF 
THE LINCOLNSHIRE COAST BOULDERS. 
ALFRED HARKER, M.A., F.G.S., 
St, John's College, Cambridge, 
It appears from Mr. Burton’s communication in the November 
number of ‘The Naturalist’ that he and Mr. Wheeler still 
reject the idea that boulders have been transported coastwise 
across the Humber mouth. As I think they have not quite 
appreciated the cogency of the argument, I will venture to 
re-state it more pointedly. 
It is admitted that the Holderness coast is, and always 
has been, rapidly wasting. Mr. Wheeler thinks that I have 
exaggerated the amount of this waste, but it is easy to make 
a rough calculation from approximate data. Taking the 
average loss at one yard, the average height of the cliffs at ten 
feet, and the length of coast-line from Bridlington to Kilnsea at 
thirty-five miles—-all well within the mark—lI find the amount of 
boulder-clay removed in a century to be more than two millions 
of tons. If we further suppose 10,000 years to have elapsed 
since the Glacial Period, and estimate the boulders at one- 
twentieth of the whole mass, we have ten millions of tons of 
boulders to account for. 
While the fine anbertad is rapidly washed away, the boulders 
travel slowly southward along the coast. They can be traced 
extension of more than a mile-and-a-half in two hundred years. 
w it is manifest that this process cannot go on for long in 
the future, and cannot have gone on for long in the past. Spurn 
Point must be only a temporary resting-place for the boulders: 
r. 
that resting-place, and so it cannot help to solve the problem. 
Reid’s explanation, which I quoted in my former note, 
seems to be the only possible deduction from the, facts. 
December 1899. 
