APPENDIX C : STRATIFICATION OF HACKNESS HILLS 
225 
general and practical knowledge of soils as by an acquaintance with 
the strata which form them, and upon which they rest. There may be 
considerable variety and great difference in the nature of a soil where no 
adventitous mixture occurs, and this arises solely from a difference 
in the nature of the beds composing the thick stratum from which the 
soil is formed. These great varieties of soil varying according to the 
kind of stone upon which it reposes is well-known to practical farmers 
on the Hackness hills, and to most other occupiers of the same kind of 
land thence to Hambleton. They all know there is a thin, dry, stony 
soil over the limestone, a deeper and more tenacious soil over the 
wallstone nearer the moors, a range of free woiking yellowish sand land 
and poor, blackish, or grey sand upon the Moors. 
The two last kinds are both of them upon the plane of the Calcareous 
Grit rock. The two other kinds, which commonly enclose a much better 
soil between them, are upon the stratum of Coralline Oolite so that we 
have five very different kinds of land upon two strata which shows the 
necessity of examining the rocks in detail instead of grouping them 
into formations, at least it is absolutely necessary to do so in Agricultural 
Geology — ^and especially where it is to be, as in this case, locally applied 
to the distinctions in the rocks and soils of an estate or farm. The 
following is detailed view of the strata very distinguishable in the 
Hackness Hills. 
O 
/Upper Calcareous Grit 
I Limestone. 
Coralline 
Oolite 
Calcareous Grit 
Spongite Coral Bed. 
Grey or Wallstone. 
Reddish Yellow Sand, correspondmg 
with the indurated sand exposed 
north side of Scarboro' Castle hill. 
Cherty bed of Stone which forms the 
planes of the moors and the high 
and well-defined edge of the Tabu- 
lar hills. 
Freestone beds below this. 
Oxford Clay. 
Hackness Rock. 
Clay Beneath, 
cornbrash. 
