DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
8 
remarkable phenomena with which they are attended; to review the 
general inferences to which these phenomena lead; and conclude 
with a comparative account of analogous animal deposits, and of the 
evidences of diluvial action connected with them in this country and 
on the Continent. 
Kirkdale is situated (as may be seen by reference to the annexed 
map, Plate I.) about 25 miles N. N. E. of the city of York, between 
Helmsley and Kirby Moorside, near the point at which the east base 
of the Hambleton hills, looking towards Scarborough, subsides into 
the vale of Pickering, and on the S. extremity of the mountainous 
district known by the name of the Eastern and the Cleveland Moor¬ 
lands. 
The substratum of this valley of Pickering is a mass of stratified 
blue clay, identical with that which at Oxford and Weymouth reposes 
on a similar limestone to that of Kirkdale, and containing, subordi¬ 
nate^, beds of inflammable bituminous shale, like that of Kimeridge, 
in Dorsetshire. Its south boundary is formed by the Howardian 
hills, and by the elevated escarpment of the chalk that terminates 
the Wolds towards Scarborough. Its north frontier is composed of 
a belt of limestone, extending eastward 30 miles from the Hambleton 
hills, near Helmsley, to the sea at Scarborough, and varying in breadth 
from four to seven miles; this limestone is intersected by a succession 
of deep and parallel valleys (here called dales), through which the fol¬ 
lowing rivers from the moorlands pass down southwards to the vale 
of Pickering, viz. the Rye, the Rical, the Hodge Beck, the Dove, the 
Seven Beck, and the Costa; their united streams fall into the Der¬ 
went above New Malton, and their only outlet is by a deep gorge, 
b 2 
