28 
LAMPLUGH : GLACIAL SECTIONS. 
Over the extent covered by my section and for about 500 
yards beyond it, a private individual, the owner of the land abutt- 
ing on the cliff, has obtained foreshore rights from the Board of 
Trade, with the avowed intention of reclaiming and defending 
his property by the erection of a long line of sea-defences. As a 
first instalment of this work, a concrete wall was commenced four 
years ago near the South Pier, and carried across the beach for a 
distance of 750 feet ; but having been based on a soft laminated 
clay, (No. 4 of section), its foundations have slipped upwards and 
outwards m places ; and it is now in a very imsatisfactory condi- 
tion. I suppose it is owing to this cause that the work has been 
suspended. 
The waste of the cliff along this section has always been very 
rapid, but since the wall was built, the sea has encroached still 
faster on the cliff beyond ; so that while the recession of the beach- 
line between 1852, when the Ordnance Survey was carried out, and 
1872, in twenty years, was 220 feet, the recession since then, 
that is, in ten years, has been 150 feet. The actual loss in thirty 
years on this small estate with an exposed frontage to the shore 
of 1,200 yards, has been about 26 acres. The sea is swiftly 
bringing about a final settlement of the land question in Holderness. 
That part of the accompanying section which is now hidden 
by the new wall is from a sketch I made of the cliff in 1877, just 
before the building commenced ; the exposed part I have more 
carefully planned this autumn. 
Oil comparing this section with the one T published last year 
of the cliff to the north of the town, great differences will be 
observed in the beds above the Purple Clay. These I shall not 
now attempt to explain, but as I have got a full series of sections 
and notes from the deep drainage works which have just been 
carried out in the town, and as these extend from one side of the 
town to the other, I expect to be able to correlate the beds ; and 
hope next year to give my results, and thus in effect to render 
the sections continuous. 
