SJieppard : The Making of East Yorkshire. 



135 



Rounding- the corner, the old bay of Holderness was entirely 

 occupied by the invader, up to and beyond the pre-g-lacial chalk 

 cliff, and that great mass of g^ravel, clay, and sand forming- 

 the land with which we are so familiar, east of the Yorkshire 

 Wolds, is nothing- more nor less than a terminal moraine of the 

 g-lacier in question. In the g-ravel pit at Burstwick can be seen 

 the nature of the material carried down by the ice. If examined 

 closely the manner in which the g-lacier worked and the former 

 direction of the moving ice can be ascertained. Rocks from 

 Scotland, the Cheviots, and the English Lake District occur 

 cheek by jowl with the limestones of Teesdale, the Lias fossils 

 from Whitby, Oolitic fragments from Scarborough, chalk fossils 

 from Flamborough, and various igneous rocks from Christiania. 

 These latter are of particular interest, and a great variety of 

 forms have been met with. In addition to the rocks are 

 innumerable fragments and perfect examples of shells of an 

 Arctic type torn from their home by the glacier, and with these 

 also a number of bones of the Walrus, Irish Elk, Bison, 

 Rhinoceros, Reindeer, and other animals are found. 



There is a line of gravel mounds extending from Bridlington 

 through Kelk, Brandesburton, Sproatley, and Burstwick towards 

 Paull, which represents material deposited by the melting ice at 

 one stage in its career. This chain of hills is of some interest, 

 because at Paull the morainic mound there is responsible for the 

 diversion in a south-westerly direction of the present Humber 

 channel. Originally, as borings in Holderness prove (and as 

 would naturally be expected on a priori grounds), the Humber 

 flowed due east ; the mantle of drift, which has done so much 

 in Yorkshire for the diversion of the river channels, caused the 

 Humber to change its course. It had to flow round the mound 

 in which Paull battery has since been built, and continued its 

 course in that direction. Where would Grimsby now be, were 

 it not for the mound of gravel at Paull deposited by the 

 Scandinavian glacier during the glacial period ? Formerly the 

 river Derwent emptied itself due eastwards into the sea. Its out- 

 let, however, was blocked up by drift, the channel diverted into an 

 entirely different direction, and to-day the waters of the Derwent 

 instead of finding their way directly into the sea, have to flow 

 right round the East Riding and reach their goal by way of 

 York and Goole and the Humber. This is only one of many 

 similar instances in this county. 



In addition to the changes already referred to, Prof. Kendall 

 has recently shown"^ that during the glacial period the damming 



5905 Maj' I 



*O.J.G.S., Aug-ust 1902, 



