BOULDER-CLAY IN LINCOLNSHIRE. 403 
The clay here is said to be very marly and full of chalk stones, 
but that below the fen clay, in another brickyard one mile south of 
the above, is a red clay with some stones but few chalk pebbles, 
according to the information given me by Mr. Warth, the owner of 
the brick-field. 
_ At a neighbouring brickyard a trial sinking had been made 
in this bottom stony clay for 30 feet without piercing it; probably 
therefore it continues to stretch under the fen beds for some distance 
southward. 
Returning to Firsby the Boulder-clay is exposed in the railway- 
cutting near the station; and its peculiarities have been noted by 
Mr. Skertchly, who describes it at p. 209 of his Memoir on the 
Fenland (Geological Survey). It is of a reddish brown colour, 
mottled here and there with bluish grey ; small chalk pebbles are 
scattered through the mass, many of them being soft and easily 
crushed, derived probably from the Upper Chalk to the north; there 
are also fragments of other rocks, basalt, limestone, and sandstone ; 
its thickness at the station is 10 feet; and an unfailing supply of 
water is obtained from the gravel below. When, however, it is 
traced northwards into the next cutting on the railway its variable 
character again discloses itself; a clean reddish loam first takes the 
ground, succeeded by stiff mottled Boulder-clay, which passes a second 
time into red laminated sandy loam without any stones at all. 
Similar beds are shown in vertical succession at an old pit 
between the railway and Monksthorpe, in the following order. 
feet. 
Dark brown Boulder-clay............... 3 
Reddish loam, without stones ......... 4 
Purplish Boulder-clay ................4- 3 
Gravel and sand.........ccccccveceesscsees 9 
19 
In the large pits belonging to Mr. Hardy at Great Steeping, a 
similar section is exposed: the Boulder-clay is from 8 to 10 feet 
thick, and is mostly a stiff mottled clay full of chalk pebbles, but 
passes in one part into a reddish silty loam; underneath there is 
about 10 ft. of sandy gravel with seams of sand, and a bed of coarse 
gravel at the bottom; here, again, mammalian bones have been 
found. 
Northward the Boulder-clay extends up the Steeping valley to 
within a quarter of a mile of Partney church; and a long tongue 
stretches up the hollow between Partney and Skendleby, but no 
outliers haye been observed further up the main valley. Near Ashby 
the thin edge of the Hessle Clay may be seen in the river-bank over- 
lying dark Kimmeridge Clay ; the former thickens southwards ; and 
the Kimmeridge Clay ceases to be visible below Halton Bridge, 
where the river enters the ground occupied by the beds of clay and 
gravel above described. 
The lie and position of the Hessle Clay between Steeping and 
Keal Coates have already been indicated; its surface extension 
