446 COLE : DESCRIPTION OF PHOTOGRAPH OF BOULDER CLAY CLIFFS. 
their destructive tendency. The whole cliff is slowly set in motion 
and glides down to the shore, to be washed away by the next high 
tide. Its top is in constant recession, and field after field is swallowed 
up. Two yards a year is a common, and, in some parts, four yards a 
year not an uncommon, rate of loss. 
When this is borne in mind, it can easily be imagined what a 
vast alteration has taken place both in the extent and aspect of the 
coast- line since the deposition of the Boulder Clay. Filey Bay had 
then probably no existence at all, and the same might be said of Robin 
Hood's Bay, Runswick, Whitby and Bridlington Bays. But the sea 
was there before the clay, and the sea is merely regaining its own. 
In some places it has already done so. There are only a few inches 
of clay left sticking in the interstices of the rocks under the Spa at 
Whitby. The old shore-line of Lias cliffs has been completely 
exposed at the south end of Robin Hood's Bay, and similarly in other 
places ; but Carr Naze, Filey Bay, and Holderness still remain, and 
will go in time. In the memory of persons now living vast changes 
have taken place in the aspect of Carr Naze, both on the north and 
on the south sides, and it is not too much to say that some of the 
next generation may live to see Carr Naze cut in two at the top, and 
perhaps an outlier formed between the path which, on the south, 
leads to the summit, and the extreme point. 
As a record for future observers it may be stated here that the 
narrowest portion of the ridge at the top of the said pathway was 
18 feet 6 inches in April, 1895. The widest portion of the Naze, 
nearer the point, was at the same time 137 feet 6 inches.. The 
narrowest part at the base of promontory near the Spa was 1 47 feet. 
