30 
MOETIMEE: ORIGIN OF CHALK DALES. 
stroug-ly opposed these views, and expressed his belief that 
they were nearly all caused by streams of running- water, which, if 
I fully comprehended his meaning-, originated at, and flowed from the 
upper end of each valley to lower ground and then to the sea. 
Though this fluviatile theory has been and is still held by some of 
the best Geolog-ists of the day, it does not seem applicable to the 
area under consideration. The valleys themselves do not show any 
well marked proof of having been excavated by running water ; 
whilst the very few existing streams now running for short distances 
along some of the yalley bottoms, do not seem to have had any 
relation to such a vast number of streams as would have been 
required to produce the existing valleys. Moreover there is 
no evidence that one of these dales has ever been deepened, or eaten 
back since the glacial period (or last upheaval of the chalk) by 
existing streams. In support of this fluviatile action, it has been 
urged that, if the land were depressed to its former level, we should 
then have fresh water running down these valleys, deepening their 
bottoms. This would not be the case. Whether the sea was 
elevated, or the land depressed, almost any amount of rainfall would 
be able to permeate the porous ground (especially at a time when 
there was no covering of drift, and all must admit these valleys to 
be preglacial), and pass readily through the open chalk rock to the 
water line, and thus drain into the sea in the form of a broad sheet, 
all along the shore between high and low water mark. No well 
defined surface or subterranean streams of fresh water would ever 
be able to exist in the chalk ai ea. 
Could we substitute chalk for the drift deposits which cover the 
chalk in the Holderness basin, we should then have no surface 
streams running there as now ; all the water which now escapes in 
places along the inner edge of the chalk range, over the thin edge of 
the capping of the drift clay, would drain quietly beneath the 
surface of the chalk into the sea without forming any surface or 
subterranean streams ; just as large quantities of water can now be 
seen draining into the sea between the tide lines. During October, 
1881, Mr. Lamplugh and myself, observed at the base of the 
vertical cliff opposite Buckton Hall, a spring of fresh water trickling 
