LAMPLTTGII : GLACIAL SECTIONS NEAR BRIDLINGTON. 
285 
laminated elastic clay of a brown colour, without stones, surmounted 
in places by a bed of sand. At Dindington also stratified beds are 
often developed at this horizon. 
In tracing the Basement Clay southward from Bridlington Quay, 
we find that in less than a mile its upper surface, following no doubt 
the slope of the chalk, sinks below low-water mark, and does not re- 
appear. In going northward, the sections are extremely difficult to 
study, and it is only quite recently that I have been able to trace tlie 
clay. Indeed the section between the outskirts of the town and tlio 
place where the chalk suddenly appears in the cliff at Sewerby, a 
distance of under half-a-mile, has always been to me the greatest 
stumbling-block in the study of the Yorkshire Drifts. Along this bit 
of coast erosion proceeds very slowly, probably owing to the close 
proximity of tlie sheltering headland, and consequently the cliffs, 
being high and formed of loose and incoherent material, weather 
down into long slopes, so that the structure of their lower portion is 
quite obscured, and not until the vertical cliffs of chalk are reached 
is there usually any opportunity for seeing clear sections of the drift. 
But it is precisely in this hidden interval that the junction is 
made between the drifts of Flamborough and those of Holderness, 
and so perplexing are the changes which occur in this short space, 
that until they were unravelled, it was not possible to identify with 
any degree of certainty the drifts lying above the chalk cliffs witli 
those at the lower levels. At Bridlington, as just described, there are at 
least three boulder-clays, and these there is no difficulty in correlating 
with the Holderness deposits ; but above the chalk at Sewerby only 
two divisions can be traced, and, though further eastward these again 
split up, it has been impossible to say what divisions are represented. 
Searles V. Wood, as we have seen, first placed the whole with 
the Purple Clay, and other writers followed his opinion. In his latest 
paper, however, he seemed to admit the Basement Clay into tliese 
sections; but, apparently, no new evidence had been acquired, and the 
grounds on which it was' now recognized were as unsatisfactory as 
those on which he had previously based its exclusion. But last 
year, thanks partly to our borings and excavations into the 
Buried Cliff Beds, and still more to a stormy sea and higli tide, 
