2I 7 



THE YORKSHIRE BOULDER COMMITTEE AND ITS 

 WORK — A RETROSPECT. 



THOMAS SHEPPARD, F.G.S., 

 Secretary of the Yorkshire Coast Erosion Committee ; Curator of the 

 Municipal Museum, Hull. 



' Shall we, like schoolboys, think that stones were made 

 Only to cast at varlets ? ' — The Lithiard. 



' He knows through all the district where each boulder stone is 

 dwelling, 



And its size and weight and taste and smell he enters in a book.' 



— R. H. Philip. 



The increased interest being- taken in the examination of the 

 various ' erratic blocks ' of this county, and their bearing- upon 

 the condition of things which prevailed during- the last of the 

 series of great geological events — the Glacial Period — has 

 induced me to put upon record the following- few notes on the 

 history and work of the Yorkshire Boulder Committee, through 

 whose efforts we now know so much of the direction of the 

 various glaciers and ice-streams formerly existing in the North 

 of England. 



To note the position, size, and kind of any one boulder, or 

 ' erratic,' is in itself apparently of not much moment. Yet it 

 is to a very great extent to the accumulation of such records 

 that the present state of our knowledge of the size and move- 

 ment of our ancient glaciers is due. The collection and 

 classification of these facts is necessary, and much more valuable 

 than any quantity of 'theory.' On more than one occasion the 

 presence of a particular kind of rock in a particular situation 

 has entirely overthrown a theory which has perhaps been too 

 hastily formulated. 



It is nearly thirty years ago that a Committee was 

 appointed by the British Association * for the purpose of recording 

 the position, height above the sea, lithological characters, size, 

 and origin of the erratic blocks of England, Wales, and Ireland, 

 reporting other matters of interest connected with the same, 

 and taking measures for their preservation.' For sixteen or 

 seventeen years various scattered records of a miscellaneous 

 character appeared in the Association's Annual Report, some 

 of which referred to Yorkshire boulders. But these records in 

 themselves, owing to being so few in number, were not of much 

 service to glacial geologists. 



1902 July 1. 



