DEPOSITED IN WATER. 
43 
shale beds come on above ; then grits and plates ; then one solid bed 
of limestone under beds of red, and gray, and dark chert, twenty-five 
feet in thickness. This chert is often rotten in the central and other 
parts and dark, smoky gray, striped, dendritical, or purplish within, 
with hardly any organic remains. It decomposes into a kind of f rotten- 
stone.’ At the top, chert nodules are interspersed. Shales and grits 
come on above, but no other distinct limestone appears. 
This upper limestone is traceable along an escarpment generally 
near to the road from Coverdale to East Witton, being above the road 
as far as Braithwaite hall, but below the road (which runs in places on 
its terrace surface) from thence to East Witton. Plates appear below 
its range, and shales, cherts, and grits above. About fifteen feet of 
limestone are seen, and water breaks out at this level. In East Witton 
it was sunk through about seven yards in thickness. Plates and grits 
below. 
Near East Witton it is much quarried, and appears wholly crinoidal, 
and full of undulated beds and nodules of chert also crinoidal, and 
contains product* and other fossils. The chert is gray (rarely black), 
often decomposing to brown rottenstone and then discloses multitudes 
of crinoidal joints. Above is a remarkable parallel bank, reminding us 
of that formed by the black chert beds of Ley burn and Pen hill. 
This cherty and crinoidal limestone is the only representative of the 
Cam or upper scar group, and the occurrence of the variously cherty 
series above, (as in the north of Wensleydale, and in Swaledale generally, 
and on the opposite slopes of Pen hill,) and the laminated grits and 
plates below, leads me to refer it to the main lime ; I do so with the 
more confidence, because in the north-west side of Coverdale both the 
main lime and underset lime exist together ; the latter being certainly 
continuous with the Parkhead limestone, at the head of the valley, and 
being much analogous to this limestone of East Witton and Caldbergh. 
In its course up the valley, on the south-east side, this limestone is 
not very conspicuous, except in the stream near Hindlethwaite, which 
G 2 
