HOLDERNESS. 
19 
Throughout the eastern parts of Yorkshire the detritus left by these 
remarkable floods has so much of a common character, and such relations 
to the existing and extinct races of land animals, as to mark in this 
country a definite geological sera, which in the following descriptions may 
be conveniently referred to as the diluvian or clysmie Eera. The previous 
period from a like consideration will be sometimes called antediluvial. 
The floods themselves might with propriety be styled a ‘ Deluge,’ but 
for the danger of confounding by this term, the Noachian or Historical 
Catastrophe, with a geological event, whose date may be wholly dif- 
ferent. 
Diluvium. — Wherever in Holderness the earth has been penetrated 
to a sufficient depth, diluvial accumulations have been found at the 
bottom. However deep, in some instances, are the deposits of clay and 
peat in the sites of ancient lakes, and of silt in places overflowed by the 
tide, all these deposits rest on a basis of diluvial clay or gravel. I 
mention this general truth thus early, because some confusion has existed 
concerning it, and, in consequence, a great mistake has been committed 
with respect to the antiquity of the deposits of peat and timber. Thus, 
in the Philosophical Magazine for April, 1827, Mr. It. Taylor, comparing 
the subterranean forest, as it is called, of the Yorkshire coast to that of 
East Norfolk, is led to suppose that both these accumulations of timber, 
with all their imbedded bones, took place before the dispersion of the 
diluvial detritus. I do not presume to say any thing concerning the 
forest of East Norfolk, but, on what I think very sufficient evidence, I 
venture at once to affirm that the subterranean forests of East Yorkshire 
grew since the diluvian era. Of this satisfactory proofs will be ad- 
duced, when I come to describe particularly the appearances on the 
coast : it may, therefore, be sufficient now to state, that in several 
places the timber, peat, shells, and sediment, which together make up the 
lacustrine deposit, are seen resting on a depressed part of the diluvial clay 
and gravel. For the very same reason, then, that the diluvial accumula- 
tions are admitted to be posterior to the rocks which they cover, 
we must allow that the subterranean peat and timber are of still later 
date. 
