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NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE LOUTH DISTRICT. 



J. W. STATHER, F.G.S., 

 Hull. 



The following- notes have been put together at the request of 

 the editors of 'The Naturalist,' by a participator in the recent 

 very successful Lincolnshire excursion arranged by the Geological 

 Association of London, and the Yorkshire Geological Society. 



Louth is a thriving little town on the eastern slopes of the 

 Chalk Wolds of Lincolnshire, and a very pleasant and con- 

 venient centre from which to study the physical and geological 

 features of the district. 



Quite close to the town is the well-known Hubbards valley, 

 equally attractive to both geologists and lovers of the picturesque. 

 This valley is believed by the newer school of glacialists to be 

 a relic of the Great Ice Age. Professor Kendall has shown us 

 in Cleveland and elsewhere that the North Sea ice, besides 

 piling up drifts and boulders on our shores, so interrupted and 

 modified the normal drainage of the land along its margin, as to 

 produce new channels and valleys possessing special features 

 of their own. Hubbards valley is believed to be one of these 

 (Plate XVL, Fig. 2). 



East Lincolnshire, like East Yorkshire, is thickly covered 

 with Glacial Drift ; but in Lincolnshire it is more difficult to 

 make out the relationship of the various beds because of the 

 almost total absence of coaSt sections. One of the best sections 

 in East Lincolnshire is that exposed in the old clay-pit in Charles 

 Street, Louth. As Mr. Godfrey Bingley's photograph plainly 

 shows (Plate XVI., Fig. i), two boulder clays are here present 

 separated by an intermittent seam of sand and gravel. The 

 upper of the boulder clays is six to eight feet thick, and may be 

 safely correlated with the Hessle clay of Holderness, partly from 

 its colour and texture, but chiefly because it contains the same 

 limited but characteristic variety of pebbles and boulders. The 

 lower clay, apparently a very thick deposit, is greyer in colour 

 and much harder than the upper clay, and contains the boulders 

 commonly found in the lower clays of the Yorkshire coast. It 

 has recently been stated that the clays and gravels exposed in 

 this clay pit are similar to the Kirmington series. We saw 

 nothing in support of this view. On the other hand, the whole 

 section in the Charles Street pit could, in our opinion, in all its 

 essential particulars be matched over and over again, almost 

 anywhere on the Holderness coast. 



1905 July I. 



