Geology -- Great Britain; Geology, Stratigraphic -- Cretaceous
This statement is not to be wondered at. Look at the map (page 2). Not
far from North Grimston there must evidently be great unconformity of
strata. Notice several of the formations, instead of running parallel
to one another, actually are at right angles. For instance, we have
the Speeton clay, the oolites, and the lias, almost perpendicular in
direction to the White Chalk, a little to the west of Great Driffield.
Such a condition of affairs must have resulted from great disturbances,
and there would be nothing strange in a part of the series being
displaced or altogether wanting.
Some miles to the south, near the town of Pocklington, the strata are
again parallel in direction to each other, and accordingly the Red Chalk
is found, as before, at the base of the Wolds. Professor Phillips, in
his work on the Geology of Yorkshire, figures some Red Chalk fossils
from Goodmanham, near Market Weighton, and alludes to their also
occurring at Brantingham, not far from the River Humber, the boundary of
the county.
Thus, then, the Red Chalk has been traced through Yorkshire; speaking
roughly one might say, that it for the most part takes an undulating
course at the base of the Wolds; that it rises with a very gentle
inclination from the sea near the village of Speeton; that it proceeds
nearly due west until it approaches the neighbourhood of Malton, that
it then suddenly changes its direction, and advances south-east until
it sinks below the marsh-land six or seven miles to the west of Hull,
having occupied a distance of about fifty miles.
We now cross the river Humber, and find the Red Chalk again near the
banks at a place called Ferraby, to the west of Barton in Lincolnshire.
The Museum of the Geological Society of London possesses specimens taken
from that part, and in a note attached to them there is this remark,
that first came White Chalk, then Red Chalk, then a blue clay; thus it
is evident there is the same state of things prevailing as we had at
Speeton; and the same observation will apply to the appearance of the
specimens themselves.
But as we travel along the western base of the Lincolnshire Wolds, or
Chalk Downs (for Londoners would so term them), although we find the
Red Chalk underneath the White, yet the blue clay beneath the Red Chalk
is wanting; its place is supplied by a thick series of brown coloured
sands, with included beds of sandy limestone, full of fossils like the
Kentish Rag, only not possessing echini and belemnites. These beds have
been referred to the lower greensand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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