YORKSHIRE-PHYSICAL ASPECT. xxr 



The first ten or twelve miles of the Yorkshire coast, com- 

 mencing from the mouth of the Tees, is low and fronted by a reach 

 of firm sandy beach, but at Marske and Saltburn begins to rise. 

 Here the Cleveland hills begin to present towards the sea a line 

 of liassic and oolitic cliffs extending for forty-four miles, and ter- 

 minating at the Castle Hill of Scarborough. These Cleveland 

 sea-cliffs — amongst the loftiest in England, and attaining their 

 maximum height of 680 feet at Boulby — afford several breeding 

 stations for the cormorant and the herring gull, whilst along 

 their range the raven formerly bred in scattered pairs in suit- 

 able stations. It is indeed probable that a single pair still lingers 

 at a locality which it would hardly be politic further to indicate. 

 The birds are there often seen, and as the species is not of a 

 roving disposition, the probabilities are that they still nest. The 

 Scarborough Castle Hill — the outlying mass of rock which marks 

 the southward termination of the Cleveland cliffs, was also in 

 former times a breeding-station of this bird, and it is recorded to 

 have nested there for the last time about 1850. 



The coast — now the eastern termination of the Vale of 

 Pickering — is comparatively low from Scarborough southward, 

 and mostly composed of soft rocks which offer but slight resistance 

 to the destructive action of the waves, save where the hard sand- 

 stone reef of Filey Brigg projects into the sea. The shores are 

 here composed of sandy beaches. On the diluvial cliffs near 

 Filey a few herring gulls breed annually. 



Some distance S.S.E. of Filey the chalk deposits of England 

 reach their northern termination in a lofty range of tide-washed 

 mural precipices, the well-known cliffs of Speeton, Buckton, 

 Bempton, and Flamborough, the most extensive and densely 

 inhabited breeding resort of sea-fowl in England. Here guille- 

 mots, puffins, razorbills, and kittiwakes breed in countless 

 multitudes, the guillemots being by far the most numerous; and 

 there are also a pair or two of herring gulls, and a few cormo- 

 rants. In a cave in Buckton cliff called ' The Cote ' the rock 

 dove breeds in great numbers, and its congener the stock dove 

 is particularly numerous, breeding in the cliffs south of the North 

 Landing at Flamborough. The house martins have their nests 



