NORWOOI>— GEOLOGY OF HOTHAM. 



423 



shales and limestones of true Liassic colour and consistency. At these 

 points particularly, and along that part of the escarpment between 

 North Cave and South Cliffe, I made diligent search for the " Eone- 

 bed," and "Insect-bed," on two consecutive days, without success. 

 Neither can I learn, upon full inquiry, that any remains, either of fishes 

 or saurians, have ever been found in these pits. Consequently, I con- 

 clude, both from my own experience and the testimony of several intelli- 

 gent persons, that the Bone-hed, " with bones," does not extend into 

 Yorkshire, or, at least, is absent in this locality. Neither w^as 1 more 

 successful in my search for tlie Insect -bed, though I should not be sur- 

 prised to learn, hereafter, that these finely-laminated limestones at the 

 bottom of the Hotham Lias, have preserved some insect-remains. I 

 was often almost disappointed in cleaving them that no wings occurred 

 to me. A more detailed and special examination of this zone by such a 

 hand as Mr. Brodie's, might bring to light some hidden treasures ; 

 meanwhile I have nothing more to record concerning it. 

 ; The dip of the strata seems very gently eastward, and could be readily 

 estimated with exactness in the roadside-cutting leading to Hotham 

 village, — a section which deserves attention, both for its stratification 

 and its fossils. 



Although the Lower Lias series is present here in great thickness, 

 and, possibly, in all its members, yet I have found no means of studying 

 any of its zones higher than that of GtypJim incurva, till we come to 

 the highest of all, where it forms the base of the MiMone in the town- 

 ship of North Cave. And, excepting a single example of a large 

 Pleurotomaria AngJica, dug out of a marl-pit between North Cave and 

 Hotham, I am scarcely acquainted with any other of its fossils than 

 those which I have already enumerated. 



A very great destruction has happened to this formation in and around 

 North Cave, reducing the range of hill of which I have been speaking 

 to the level of the sandy country on the west, sweeping far away its 

 softer constituents, and piling up in great thickness, over limited areas, 

 the shattered fragments of its harder limestones in the state of a dis- 

 jointed and water- worn drift. Thus the northern side of the village of 

 North Cave is built upon a thick mass of drift, which at the places 

 where I measured was ten feet deep, and almost wholly composed of 

 small rounded fragments of the ^' Posidonomija-ledy Similarly, in the 

 ** Sandy Lane," between North and South Cave, there is an extensive, 



