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Report on the Farming of the 
duce a very pleasing combination of salient and retiring slopes, -which 
resemble on a grand scale tlie petty concavities and ])rojections in the 
actual channel of a river. No doubt these valleys -were excavated by 
water, but not by the water of rains, or springs, or rivulets. Some 
greater flood in more ancient times has performed the work, and left the 
traces of its extent in the pebbles which it has deposited along its 
course." 
The area occupied by the chalk hills in this Riding may be 
illustrated by comparing it to the letter L inverted, in Roman 
r character, placed rather obliquely, the upper limb 
representing the northern division, or high Wolds, 
which extend from Acklam Brow to Flamborough 
Head, a distance of 30 miles; the stem indicating a 
tract of land which may be termed the lower Wolds, 
and which extends from somewhere near Huggate to Hessle, in 
a south-easterly direction, being about 29 miles long by 5 or 6 
broad. The outer sides of the diagram correspond in some 
degree with the abrupt escarpments of these hills on their north 
and west sides — the one towards the Vale of Pickering, the other 
towards the Vale of York ; whilst in the angle formed by the 
limb and stem may be imagined the surface of the chalk gra- 
dually sloping towards the south-east, until it dips altogether be- 
neath the diluvial sods of Holderness. 
These hills attain their highest elevation at Bishop VVilton 
Beacon, where they are 812 feet above the level of the sea ; from 
this point southward they gradually decrease in height, until at 
Brantingham, the southernmost brow of the Wolds in Yorkshire, 
they do not exceed 500 feet. Throughout the whole of the high 
Wold district the elevation of the summits of the hills is pretty 
uniformly maintained ; the dip, however, of the strata is to the 
east, and is stated by Professor Phillips to be about 16 feet 
per mile. This high district may be generally described as con- 
sisting of two or three long parallel ridges, running- east and 
west, having on their summits a considerable breadth of flat table- 
land. Upon these elevated plains there is uniformly found a 
covering of diluvial matter from 18 inches to 2 feet in thickness; 
which consists of a deep and dark-coloured loamy soil, occasion- 
ally having an admixture of clay. The soil of the lower Wolds 
answers tolerably well to the description given by Henry Strick- 
land, Esq., who published ' A Survey of the East Riding of York- 
shire, by order of the Board of Agriculture,' in the year 1812. 
He says (p. 14) — 
" The soil of the wolds is with little variation a light, friable, calca- 
reous loam from 3 to 10 inches in depth." 
Marshall, who in the year 1788 published a work entitled 
' The Rural Economy of Yorkshire/ says (vol. ii. p. 244) — 
