SCARBOROUGH CLIFF. 
55 
In cutting the cliff above the terrace walk at Scarborough, a seeming- 
dislocation in the diluvium has been exposed. If the appearances may- 
be trusted, two layers of wet sand have been depressed several feet on the 
northern side. But the inequality of the depression in the two layers, 
and the seeming dislocation not extending into the gravel beneath, are 
cii’cu instances never observed in a determinate dislocation of strata. The 
cliff over the spaw varies from one hundred and fifty-one to one hundred 
and seventy-one feet in height above high-water. 
That part of Scarborough emphatically called the Cliff, is from ninety 
to one hundred and ten feet above high-water ; from hence the slope 
grows continually flatter to Bland’s cliff, and beyond this point the whole 
shore is occupied by streets as far as the commencement of the outer 
pier. Here the steeps of the castle-hill rise suddenly from the water, 
and, further on, reach an elevation of two hundred and seventy feet; 
but part of the castle garth is, perhaps, fifteen feet higher. The first 
rock which is seen above the pier is a ferruginous sandstone with fossil 
shells, which is ascertained to be identical with the rock of Kelloways in 
Wiltshire. Above lies the gray argillaceous earth which occupies the 
place of the Oxford clay ; this gradually passes into the calcareous grit, 
and some beds of the coralline oolite surmount the whole. These strata 
decline in the eastern face of the hill, so that the Kelloways rock sinks 
below the level of high-water, and at a projecting point the Oxford 
clay keeps the foot of the cliff ; but soon rising again, where the hill 
fronts the north, they ascend towards the drawbridge. The fort on the 
northern face of the hill is levelled on nearly the lower beds of coralline 
oolite ; of this rock thirty feet appear on the hill above ; its whole thick- 
ness here is nearly forty feet ; below are about eighteen feet of solid 
calcareous grit beds ; these rest on three layers of hard calcareo-siliceous 
balls, lying in soft yellow sand, twenty-eight feet thick : then succeed 
fifty feet of calcareous grit, hard above but graduating below to the 
next stratum, the Oxford clay ; which, being one hundred and thirty- 
five feet thick, occupies the remainder of the hill to high-water 
mark. 
