52 
stone is good for building purposes ; but the top and bottom beds 
appear to stand weathering best. If you see a well-marked nab or hill 
point anywhere between Bradford and SkiptoD, you may safely pre- 
sume that it is either the Kough Kock or the Kinder Grit you are looking 
at. The beds of shale vary much in hardness, but appear moderately 
uniform in fineness or quality. In some places they appear to have a 
quantity of iron in them, which fits them for a good road metal ; while 
in other places they are but little removed from soft clay. These shales 
are worked to some extent for bricks ; but the glacial drift clays are 
more easily attainable for that purpose, and are largely mixed with the 
true shale clay. Eemembering our position in the valley, and still 
looking south-east, the highest points of the vaUey in front of us are 
crowned with the Halifax coal seam, which having passed at inconve- 
nient depths under Pontefract, Knottingley, Castleford and Leeds, 
comes to the surface in a long line stretching from Yeadon to Eccleshill, 
Thornton, Denholme, and Halifax, and appears in a patch on Baildon 
Hill. It may for aught we know have extended over the valley 
where we now are at a height of some 800 feet above our heads. 
Behind us, and appearing near Bradley before coming to Skipton, we 
have Limestone showing at the surface. These beds do not emerge 
from beneath the Millstone Grit rocks with the regularity which we 
might expect, for there is a line of fault which cuts off the grit beds in 
a very short distance, and gives them a much steeper dip than they 
have lower down the valley. 
A more interesting geological scene can scarcely be witnessed any- 
where than may be studied on the road from Skipton to Bolton Bridge. 
Vast sheets of hard limestone lie tilted against one anotlier in the 
centre of the valley, the softer shales and limestones occupying the 
slopes of the hills on each side, and the edges of the hills on both sides 
being crowned with hard sandstones. Confining ourselves to the series 
of the Millstone Grit proper, it appears from the researches of the 
Geological Survey that there is so much irregularity in the various 
middle beds, some of them occasionally thinning out in short 
distances, and others changing their texture entirely, that it is almost 
impossible to form any general plan for their classification. The series 
in Derbyshire shows quite a different set of beds from what is found 
here, and these again differ entirely from the Lancashire series. There 
is not much to be said for the fossils of the Millstone Grit. Notwith- 
standing the publication of a list of some 500 species by a gentleman 
in the Bristol district, we find nothing but what is much better repre- 
sented either in the Coal Measures proper, or else in the Mountain 
Limestone. In fact, the fossils are preserved as one might expect they 
would be if the refuse of a tropical forest were to be imbedded in the 
