Anniversary Address. 181 



give directions. From the donjon-keep along the north and 

 east sides as far as the entrance before-mentioned, the walls 

 are gone, and the smooth cropped grass shews the castle-green. 



Perhaps hereafter, the debris of the old walls under this 

 turf may be removed and the turf relaid, as has been done at 

 Warkworth with good effect. 



This castle was built by Robert de Manners in the 15th 

 year of King Edward III., as appears by the patent rolls, 

 part 1. m. 15." 



I regret that none of the excursions of the year have taken 

 us within reach of Beanley and Titlington Hill. Had they 

 done so, I would have brought under observation some in- 

 stances of a very remarkable conformation of the moorland 

 surface on certain declivities. The subsoil, consisting for the 

 most part of drift, has been deeply furrowed into a series of 

 nearly parallel channels, accompanied, perhaps, by some slight 

 upgathering of the intervening ridges or balks. These last 

 are often upon the scale of the old hedgemounds of the north 

 of England, so that a man standing in the channel or furrow 

 cannot see over the balks on either side of him ; and some- 

 times this scale is much exceeded. 



The whole is obviously the work of some ancient natural 

 agency well worthy of our study. 



The general course of this deep disturbance of the subsoil 

 is down the slope of the hill, but subject to curvatures. 



Although something is to be learnt from observing the 

 manner in which our deeper deposits of peat are apt to open 

 in fissures, which occasionally show a similar sort of parallel- 

 ism ; and more still from the small rain-channels formed upon 

 the newly-made slopes of a railway-cutting; still objections, 

 which appear insuperable, stand in the way, if we attempt to 

 account for the phenomena in question, on the sole hypothesis 

 of an extensive ancient development of peat ; and especially, 

 there is often no considerable thickness of vegetable soil, but 

 rather a scantiness. Still less can rain, however abundant, 

 have been the cause, through the formation of rain-channels 

 in sinuous parallelism, is instructive. More so still are the 

 small channels made on a steep slope of the sea-sands, when 



Mm 



