176 LAMPLUGH : NOTES ON THE WHITE CHALK OF YORKSHIRE. 
Chalk 150 yards long has moved forward and downward for 50 or 60 
feet, but has then been arrested and has remained without further 
change for over a generation. Under favourable circumstances a 
good climber may generally here ascend or descend the cliff, which is 
425 feet high, without much risk ; but between this place and 
Chattertlirow, near Thornwick, a distance of four miles, there is as 
a rule absolutely no possibility of descending to the shore except by 
means of ropes. It chanced however that during the winter of 1895-6 
there was a very heavy fall of the cliff at Old Rollup, opposite 
Bempton, and last Easter when I was over the ground with two 
friends, we found it possible to descend at that place quite easily to 
the shore, a fact worth recording, as it may be very many years before 
such conditions recur. 
The drifts, from 30 to 50 feet thick, which cap the high cliff 
known as Raincliff, in the middle distance of No. 2, consist mainly of 
rudely stratified clayey gravel and sand with some boulder clay, the 
stones both in the gravel and in the clay being almost entirely of 
distant origin. Their position on the crest of the escarpment is 
remarkable. The ground slopes inland from near the edge of the 
cliff to form the Bempton Valley, and the main mass of the drift runs 
in a rude chain of mounds on the top of the slope without descend- 
ing into the valley (see map). This arrangement seems to prove 
that, in spite of their semi-stratified character, these drifts cannot 
have been deposited during a period of submergence, but that they 
have been accumulated as a fringing moraine at the margiii of the 
great ice-sheet which once filled up the bed of the North Sea to a 
level slightly higher than the clifis at Speeton. Towards Flamborough 
where the cliffs sink lower these moundy drifts pass inland across the 
headland, producing effects to which attention will be called in the 
other views of the series. 
3. Scale Nab and Bempton Cliffs. 
This view, from the opposite direction to the last, shows the 
continuation of the cliff-range across the parish of Bempton. It is 
* The Drifts of Flamborough Head have been described by the author in 
Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc , vol. xlvii., p. 384, (1891) where also the bibliography 
of the subject is recorded. 
