xo8 Malton Museum and Other Geological Collections. 
The late C. Fox -Strang ways, who surveyed the Scarborough district, 
had a private series of geological specimens which were also given to 
Hull ; as more recently were the extensive collections made by the late 
F. F. Walton, F.G.S. ; and C. G. Danford, who, for many years lived 
at Reighton, and made a marvellous collection of Ammonites, and 
Belemnites from the Speeton Clay. Many of these were new species to 
science, and with the exception of some of the types which 
went to the British Museum, the whole of his specimens came to Hull. 
On leaving Reighton, he went to live at Folkestone, where the beautiful 
fossils, still with their original pearl-like shell intact, are so famous, 
and he spent some years collecting from these beds, and these objects 
joined his others from Speeton. 
A little while ago the well-known museum on the harbour side at 
Whitby was removed to the new building in the Pannett Park and 
was opened by the Earl of Harewood. In recent years quite a revived 
interest has been taken in Whitby, and Messrs. Kendall and Sutcliffe 
have done wonders in making the Museum attractive to the public. 
On advice, however, they decided to specialize in local features, and the 
unrivalled series of Ammonites and saurians from the liassic rocks as 
well as local bygones and specimens relating to the one-time whaling 
industry, and Cook, the navigator, (who was born near Whitby), are 
the main points of interest in the Whitby Museum to-day, and deservedly 
so. As with other museums founded about a century ago, Whitby had a 
fine set of Oolitic fossils from the Malton and Settringham district, and 
these, not being of local interest, were purchased by Hull. 
The Whitby Collection included a well preserved starfish from the 
Oolites, which had been looked upon with envious eyes by the present 
writer since his boyhood. Some of these specimens have recently been 
figured and described in a Monograph of the Palaeontographical Society, 
Vol. LXXXIV. 
Quite apart from this flow of collections into the Third Port, the Hull 
Museum already possessed a very good geological series, started in the 
first instance by a selection of specimens from the Kirkdale Cave, given 
by Frank Buckland. We believe the Kirkdale Cave really started the 
museums at Whitby, Scarborough, York, and Hull. The last place was 
fortunate also in as much as William Smith, the father of English geology, 
and his illustrious nephew, John Phillips, the author of many standard 
works on geology gave courses of lectures to the members of the Hull 
Literary and Philosophical Society, and presented large collections of 
typical Yorkshire fossils, which are still treasured and kept together. 
The remarkable collection of Liassic and other Ammonites, including 
many new species, collected from the Yorkshire Drift by Mr. C. 
Thompson, and a fine series of remains of elephant, rhinoceros, reindeer, 
and bison, from the Holderness Gravels by Mrs. Dunn, and others are 
also here. 
Interesting sidelights occur in examining these various collections 
when they accumulate in one centre ! The enthusiasm of collectors in 
the early days often resulted in important specimens being missed, and 
we know of complaints having been made on more than one occasion of 
these losses. On centralising them, it is possible to find out in what 
way these examples changed hands. Perhaps the most remarkable 
instance is that in which an enormous vertebra of a shark from the Red 
Chalk at Speeton became divided. It is probably the largest bone of 
its kind recorded from that particular deposit, and must represent a 
shark of extraordinary proportions. Half of this fossil was a treasure 
in the Mortimer Collection at Driffield and, on purchasing one of the 
Scarborough collections, the other half of the same bone proved to be 
there, and it has now been possible to place them together ! 
T.S. 
The Naturalist 
