129 



GEOLOGY OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF BROUGH, 

 EAST YORKSHIRE. 



THOMAS SHEPPARD, F.G.S., 



Curator of the Municipal Museum at Hull \ 

 Secretary of the Hull Scientific and Field Naturalists' Club, and of the Geological 

 Section of the Yorkshire Xaturalists' I'liion. 



The village of Brough is pleasantly situated on the northern 

 bank of the Humber, about ten miles west of Hull. To the 

 north and east it is surrounded and sheltered by the Chalk 

 Wolds, whilst to the west, after passing the alluvial flats at 

 Broomfleet, the peat bogs of Goole and Thome Moors occur, 

 and further on the barren Triassic sandstones of the Vale of 

 York. 



There are no rocks older than the lias in the Broug-h neigh- 

 bourhood ; these beds crop out a few miles to the north-west. 

 Of course a few pebbles and boulders of palaeozoic rocks occur 

 in the gravels, but these have been brought into their present 

 situations in comparatively recent times. 



The rocks at Brough all belong to the secondaries, and are 

 capped by gravels of post-tertiary age. The various strata 

 are very fossiliferous, and what is more, the fossils can be 

 readily extracted. 



Probably 'the best way to deal in this paper with the rocks is. 

 to describe them in their natural order, commencing with the 

 lowest. The Lias, as I have already hinted, crops out to the 

 north-west, but rather out of the district I had intended to 

 describe in these notes, so I propose to only briefly refer to this 

 rock. From North Cave towards Cliff there is an escarpment 

 overlooking the southern extremity of the Plain of York, which 

 is composed of the lowest strata of the Lower Lias. Two or 

 three good exposures occur which enable the beds to be fairly 

 well examined. Going northwards from North Cave the first 

 section is in a field and has been made for marling the land 

 below. Here fossils are abundant, and the pit is of some 

 importance from a geological point of view, as it contains lower 

 beds in the lias than can be met with in the Yorkshire coast 

 sections. Ammonites j'ohnstoni, Lima gigantea, and Cardinia 

 listeri are fairly plentiful, and whole beds of a small Ostrea can 

 be met with in the lower portion of the pit. More rarely 

 Nautilus striatus, Modiola minima, and Pleuromya crowcombeia 

 can be found. Of most interest, however, is Ammonites 



1901 May 2. 1 



