HOLDERNESS. 
21 
ported are found, some in Norway, in the highlands of Scotland, and in 
the mountains of Cumberland ; others in the north-western and western 
parts of Yorkshire, and no inconsiderable portion appears to have come 
from the sea-coast of Durham, and the neighbourhood of Whitby. In 
proportion to the distance which they have travelled, is the degree of 
roundness which they have acquired. All the fragments of granite, 
porphyry, mica slate, and clay slate, which can be compared with no 
fixed rocks nearer than those of Cumberland and Westmoreland, are 
rolled to pebbles ; the angles are worn away from every mass of lime- 
stone which has been drifted from the north-western hills of Yorkshire ; 
but those which have been brought from the nearer points of the chalk 
range have yielded much less to attrition. Some attention is required 
to the original hardness of the stones : we find solid masses of ironstone 
and quartz much less worn than granite ; limestone is less rounded than 
millstone grit ; and flint retains uninjured angles, whilst chalk and mag- 
nesian limestone have lost their original surfaces. 
Few substances originally soft are carried by water to a great dis- 
tance, in a solid form. The sandstones of the western and north- 
western parts of Yorkshire, are plentiful in the gravel of the vale of 
York; but only the hard “ galliard” of Leeds and Bradford, and the 
solid millstone grit of the moors, can be recognised in the clay of 
Holderness. This clay is itself, no doubt, an aggregate principally of 
the particles into which the softer strata exposed to the ravages of 
water, have been resolved. Its vast bulk need not surprise us, when 
we remember the distance traversed by the currents, and consider how 
large a portion of the mass removed was clay and disintegrated sand. 
We might have expected to find these finer particles at the top, and 
the solid fragments of rocks lying beneath, according to their individual 
magnitude and weight. As nothing of this kind is observable, we must 
suppose the flood to have moved with such extraordinary violence, 
that its spoils, when heaped together, were little influenced in their ar- 
rangement by the direct force of gravitation. 
The ancient organic remains which lie scattered in this clay, must 
be considered in two very distinct groups : those which were removed 
