DAVIS : CONTORTIONS AT FLAMBOROUGH. 
47 
inclined at a considerable angle, and it is possible ma}^ indicate the 
direction of a branch of the contorted strata. On the one-inch 
geological map of the Flamborough district, the probable line of the 
disturbance is marked as extending due west from the cliff, passing- 
about one mile south of Speeton village. There are several exposures 
of chalk dipping at high angles which Mr. Fox Strangways considers 
may be caused by the same set of contortions : they may be seen in 
the railway cutting near Buckden Hall, near Bartingdale plantation, 
north of Wold Newton, north of Foxholes, and near Hall plantation. 
Having briefly described the position and character of the 
contortions depicted in the photographs, it may be desirable to 
consider with equal brevity the probable cause of the displacement. 
The chalk in Yorkshire, speaking broadly, is arranged with tolerable 
regularit}^, the strata dipping to a point S.E. of its eastern boundar}^, 
the strata towards its southern extremity in this county dips in an 
easterly direction, that which forms the northern portion dips in a 
southerly direction. The interposition of this immense mass of 
contorted chalk is all the more peculiar on account of its rarity. It 
is very doubtful whether any other locality in the chalk area of 
Yorkshire exhibits so great an amount of disturbance, and the 
question naturally arises as to how the beds came to be folded and 
faulted in the manner described. They are for the most part bent 
and doubled into a series of aiiticlinals and synclinals, but along the 
line of greatest pressure or possibly of greatest weakness, the beds 
are broken and faulted. The strata were deposited in a more or 
less horizontal position, and the violent contortions they now 
exhibit have been produced since their deposition. The continuity 
of the beds, notwithstanding the immense pressure to which 
they have been subjected, proves that the action causing their 
displacement took place long after the deposition of the chalk, at any 
rate a period sufficiently long to allow the strata to become 
consolidated and hard must have elapsed, or otherwise the whole 
would have been squeezed into an amorphous mass, and the bedding 
would have been obliterated. The series of anticlinals may have 
been produced either by a pressure from below, or by a contraction 
of the surface causing a latural pressure. Prof. A. H. Green 
