20 
HOLDERNESS. 
The lowest of all the accumulations which rest upon the chalk of the 
wolds is an irregular layer of fragments of chalk and flint, which, being 
derived from the stratum beneath, are very little water-worn. This sin- 
gular deposit seems due to a less violent action of running water than the 
general mass of heterogeneous pebbles which covers it. It seems to in- 
dicate that the effects ascribed to a deluge, were of different kinds, and 
produced at different periods ; as if the water had been liable to great 
periodical or successive commotion. I am not aware that any remains of 
land animals have occurred in this rubbly deposit, near Flamborough, or 
on the wolds ; but at Hessle it contains the teeth and bones of the 
extremities, of horse, ox, and deer, very little worn by attrition. These 
bones, therefore, belonged to animals residing in the neighbourhood; 
and as they are now covered up by a great thickness of clay and pebbles, 
derived from a far greater distance, we cannot doubt their antediluvian 
origin. I think the rubbly layer of chalk and flint fragments is not 
found on the highest parts of the wold-hills, but has been drifted 
chiefly to the lower part of their slopes. 
The thickest and most extensive of the diluvial accumulations in 
Holderness is a mass of clay and pebbles. In the cliffs north of Brid- 
lington and at Hessle, it is seen to cover immediately the water-moved 
rubbly chalk and flint, which lie on the great stratum of chalk. It 
extends in a connected mass, under nearly all Holderness, forming 
most of the hills and “ hard land,” and underlying most of the ac- 
cumulations of gravel and alluvial sediment. In the highest cliffs on 
this coast, its thickness is not less than one hundred and thirty feet 
Its composition is remarkably uniform. We every where observe it 
to be a solid body of clay, containing fragments of many kinds of 
rocks, which vary in magnitude, and in the degree of roundness to 
which they have been reduced. The fragments are, in general, not so 
numerous as to touch each other, but are scattered through the clay as 
plumbs in a pudding. However, on the top, or in the uppermost part 
of the deposit, they are sometimes aggregated into distinct layers of 
gravel, which continue for a short distance, and furnish springs of good 
water. The rocks from which the fragments appear to have been trans- 
