BIELBECKS. 
143 
In some places (Sandburn near York, Ouseburn, &c.) indications of 
lacustrine deposits may be observed resting on the diluvial accumula- 
tions, and containing wood, fresh-water shells, &c. as in Holderness, so 
that there can be no doubt of the similarity and, geologically speaking, 
contemporaneity of origin of all the deposits classed as diluvial in the 
northern and eastern parts of Yorkshire. Along the western base of 
the chalk wolds, about Pocklington, Market Weighton, &c. are limited 
breadths of the third sort of gravel deposit, consisting of chalk and flint 
spreading over the lias and new red sandstone deposit, and apparently 
due to local though very powerful currents, but whether contempora- 
neous with those which laid the similar gravel amidst the ordinary 
diluvium of Holderness, (page 39) or beneath it at Hessle, is diffi- 
cult to pronounce. On the sea-coast near Bridlington several situa- 
tions have been noted, which shew the diluvial currents to have 
been of some duration, subject to vary in impetus and direction, and 
to be interrupted at intervals of at least local tranquillity. In such 
a period of partial tranquillity, we may believe the laminated clays at 
Ouseburn, and Kilnsea to have been deposited, and a more interesting 
discovery of the same nature in the vale of York in 1829, appears 
to indicate that such intervals in the diluvial period may hereafter be- 
come distinctly characterized by peculiar deposits and contribute to 
correct the general history of the diluvial formation. 
The merit of first calling attention to the ossiferous marl deposit 
of Bielbecks near Market Weighton, belongs in a great degree to 
Mr. William Hey Dikes of Hull, who after a careful study of the 
circumstances of this deposit, favoured me with the information 
which he had collected. I lost no time in proposing to my friends, the 
Rev. W. V. Harcourt and Mr. Salmond, an excursion to the locality, 
and our joint communication on the subject was inserted in the Philo- 
sophical Magazine for Sept. 1829- Subsequently the great importance 
of the facts connected with this discovery, induced the Council of the 
Yorkshire Philosophical Society to continue for the advantage of science 
the excavations which the farmer had originally made for agricultural 
purposes ; and a great number of additional bones were discovered ; 
