LAMPLUGII : NOTES ON THE WHITE CHALK OF YOUKSHIRE. 175 
exposed in section at the base of the clifi* two or three hundred yards 
farther east, opposite the place where the water indents the rocky 
foreshore in the photograph. 
The thickness of the Red Chalk proper in this section is about 
30 feet, but at several higher horizons in the Lower Chalk there are 
red or pink bands, the highest being fully 80 feet above the 
basement bed. 
The thickness of the Lower Chalk is 132 feet/' It is characterized 
not only by its distinct fossil fauna, but also lithologically by the 
almost complete absence of flint, by it less indurated texture and less 
massive bedding as compared with the overlying Middle Chalk or 
Chalk-with-Flints, and by the greater abumlance of slialy partings in 
it. The effect of this difference upon the profile of the cliff is well 
brought out in the plates. The Low^er Chalk forms the base of the 
precipice for the first two miles eastward from Speeton, and here the 
erosion proceeds with comparative rapidity, as is shown by the pre- 
valence of long slopes of fallen material which the sea is constantly 
removing, and by the presence at low water of a broad rocky fore- 
shore, marking the extent of the work done by the sea since it has 
stood at its present level. These features may be studied in Plate 2. 
The most distant point visible in the view, midway between 
Buckton and Bempton, shows where the top of the Lower Chalk is 
brought down to high water mark by the southerly dip of the strata. 
Beyond this the cliffs are composed from base to crest of the hard 
thick-bedded Chalk-with-Flints, and form great unbroken walls of 
rock, as illustrated by the distant cliffs in No. 3. The low water 
scar is also here reduced to the narrowest possible dimensions or is 
entirely absent. f 
There is a huge slip of the cliff about midway in the Speeton 
range (where in No. 2 the dark shadowy slope is seen to extend down 
to the shore), known as Crowe's Shoot. At this place a great slice of 
* A detailed description of this part of the Section will be found in 
Mr. \V. Hill's paper "On the Lower Beds of the Upper Cretaceous Series in 
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire." Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, xliv., p. 320. 
t It must be noted that Xo. 2 has been taken when the tide was more than 
half-way out, and Xo. 3 at near high tide, but the above statement holds good 
as regards the Bempton Clilfs whatever the state of the tide. The shadow of 
the cliffs upon the water, in Xo. 3, might at firct glance be mistaken for 
a tidal platform. 
F 
