334 S. A. ADAMSON : THE HITCHINGSTONE. 



All being ready, the Leeds geologists were invited to inspect the 

 excavation and give an opinion respecting it ; but before stating their 

 verdict, it would be well to give a few details relative to the stone. 

 The Hitchingstone is an immense block of Rough Rock, or upper 

 section of the Millstone Grit series, standing on the moor behind 

 Wainman's Pinnacle (that rude monument situated on the crest of 

 the bold escarpment of Earl Crag, so familiar to railway travellers on 

 their way to Skipton, as it stands out in sharp relief against the blue 

 sky), and is at an elevation of 1,175 feet above sea level. As a 

 boundary stone, it has been used from time immemorial to mark the 

 place where the extensive estates of three great landowners meet, 

 who each claim a portion of the block, viz., the Duke of Devonshire 

 (Keighley Moor), Mr.Townley Parker (Stott Hill Moor), and Mr. Jas. 

 Lund (Sutton Moor). It measures on its southern and western faces 

 28 ft. 9 in. and 25 ft. respectively, and is 2 1 ft. in height. It has been esti- 

 mated to contain about 15,250 cubic feet of stone. There is a cavity 

 running right through it, which coincides in its direction with the bed- 

 ding plane; it is of an oval shape, its axes measuring 15^ in. by 12 in. 

 An old work on Keighley gives very gravely an opinion ' that it is 

 evidently the mould or matrix of an enormous fish'; but it is really a 

 hole left by the weathering out of a large tree, which by the markings 

 show it to have been of a Lepidodendroid character. It was inter- 

 esting to note that the longer axis of this cavity was horizontal, 

 showing that it had been flattened by pressure. There are no indi- 

 cations of striae whatever (although any that may have existed may 

 have weathered off), but there is every appearance of jointing, the 

 east and west sides specially showing this. This favours the opinion 

 that the adjoining portions of rock may have been separated from 

 this along the joints, leaving it in its original position. The upholders 

 of the erratic-block theory point out that there is an unconformability, 

 that is, the plane of the bedding of the stone does not coincide with 

 the dip of the surrounding strata ; but this may be explained. An 

 examination of the excavation shows that both the stone itself and 

 the underlying bed have suffered much more by weathering on the 

 north than on the south side, a portion of the under part of the stone 

 to the north, two yards wide and one yard high, having been quite 

 weathered away, leaving a passage from the western to the southern 

 side. By means of this weathering the stone has evidently been 

 lowered at the northern end, and tilted up at the southern, thus 

 causing the bedding of the stone to incline in a direction almost 

 contrary to the original dip. The section made by the excavation 

 showed some ten inches of black peaty soil, and beneath this about 

 a foot of quartz gravel, the latter arising from the denudation of the 



Naturalist, 



