40 
BRIDLINGTON. 
the bed of the lake, and are covered by several feet of clay and peat 
without shells, a circumstance which seems to warrant the supposition 
that the upper layers of sediment and peat were produced in some short 
period of time, in consequence, perhaps, of great land-floods. 
In these deposits lie the skeletons of postdiluvian animals ; the great 
extinct elk, the red deer, the fallow deer, and the ox ; with trees and 
fruits, which grew in the forests they frequented. In more than twenty 
examples on the coast south of Bridlington, it may be clearly seen that 
the lacustrine deposits rest upon the diluvial accumulations ; but are not 
themselves covered by any other deposit. It is a mistake, therefore, to 
imagine the skeletons of deer, and the peat and trees constituting the 
“ subterranean forest” of Holderness, to be of the antediluvian aera. The 
shells, bones, and trees, belong, with a single exception, to species now 
in existence in this island, the deposits which enclose them are evidently 
the most recent in the country ; and differ in no important particulars 
from the peat and mail-bogs of Scotland and Ireland, whose accumulation 
is not yet ended. 
Tertiary beds. — One of the most important inquiries that presents 
itself to the geologist, whilst investigating the coast of Yorkshire, relates 
to the occurrence of any of the tertiary beds above the chalk, and Mr. 
Smith has stated, on his geological map of \ orkshire, that crag shells 
occur in the neighbourhood of Pattrington. These I have previously 
described, and cannot doubt that they belong to a more recent epoch. 
Professor Sedgwick, who examined the spot in 1821, describes appear- 
ances on the north side of the harbour at Bridlington, which he supposed 
to indicate the presence of some one of the strata above the chalk. I 
have repeatedly searched, without success, for these beds ; but in July. 
1828, I found, sixty yards north of the harbour, below the level of half 
tide, an enormous mass of dark shaly clay, whose lamina; seemed dipping 
to the south. It was several yards in length and breadth, was sur- 
rounded by brown pebbly clay, and contained a few fossils, amongst 
w hich were a peculiar ammonite ; the columnar joints of pentac. briar- 
eus, and what I believe to be a form of avicula inasquivalvis. I 
