time will fall in, and form further indentations in the coastline, and leave outlying stacks.

But perhaps the most curious and interesting feature of the cliffs under review is the fact that they are capped, even on their highest summits, by a great thickness of Boulder Clay. This is a comparatively recent deposit, due to ice-movements. It is impossible in a brief memoir to enter into explanations; it must suffice to record the bare facts. It is incontestable that in the ages that are past, but, geologically, comparatively recent, the whole of Scandinavia, and Scotland, and the North of England was covered with a sheet of ice, varying according to latitude from one to two or three thousand feet in thickness, much as Greenland is now. An ice stream, or gigantic glacier, from Norway, stretching across the area of the present North Sea, combined with minor glaciers from Scotland and Westmoreland, impinged on the East Coast of Yorkshire. Innumerable blocks of Shap granite from Westmoreland, of Basalt from Teesdale, and of characteristic rocks from Christiania, have been found on the Yorkshire coast, and even on the summit of Bempton Cliffs. They could only have been conveyed by ice, just as granite and primitive rocks of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa were carried across the central vale of Switzerland, and left stranded high up on the flanks of the Oolitic mountains of the Jura. The great glacier from Scandinavia, in its progress across the North Sea, ground down into fine mud a certain percentage of the stones which had fallen on its surface, leaving the larger and harder ones smoothed and striated, and, when a warmer condition of climate set in, gradually melted away, and

deposited its burden all over Holderness, and, as stated above, even on the highest summits of the Chalk cliffs. Its moraine, as the Swiss call it, or heap of sand, gravel, and erratics, due to the melting of the ice, may be traced from Speeton Mill to the Beacon Hill at Flamborough, parallel with the coast line.

Much more might be added, but space forbids. The reader is referred to the interesting paper on the Drift deposits of Flamborough Head, by Mr. Lamplugh,* and to Geological Rambles, by the Rev. E. Maule Cole, where the general subject is popularly discussed.

E. MAULE COLE.

* Quart. Jour., Geol. Soc., No. 187., Aug. 1891.

THE BIRDS OF FLAMBOROUGH HEAD.

'HE visitor to Flamborough should not fail, if he can

THE

conveniently do it, to walk along the cliffs (June or July are about the best months), and see the cliff climbers pursue their dangerous avocation, which consists in a man being lowered by means of a long rope, over the precipitous cliffs at Bempton and Buckton, for the purpose of collecting the eggs of the sea-birds which here breed in countless myriads, and occupy every ledge and projection. There is an interesting description of the "Egg-climming," given by Mr. Seebohm, F.L.S., F.Z.S., in his book on "British Birds," vol. iii., p. 395-397, and by his kind permission it is here printed:

:

"The Guillemot only lays one egg; indeed, it could not sit upon two, the egg being enormously large for the size of the bird, which does not sit upon it on its breast, like a duck, but rests upright on its tail.

The eggs of the Guillemot are much sought after as articles of food. The manner in which they are taken from the cliffs at Flamborough is very interesting. A party of 'climmers' consists of three, two at the top, and one suspended in mid-air. The latter, in consequence of the greater risk he has to run, takes one half of the eggs as his share. This adventurous man must have a clear head, or he would become giddy at the fearful depths below him; he must not be too heavy, or he would tire out the two men who have to lower and

raise him some 200ft. or more twenty times a day; whilst, at the same time, he must have a good knowledge of the various ledges and crannies where the birds breed. He first puts on what he calls his 'breeches,' a belt of flat rope with a small loop at each end, to which the cord by which he is suspended is attached, and two large loops, through which he puts his legs. An iron bar is driven into the ground, to which a rope is attached to hang down the cliff to assist him in raising himself, and with which to make signals to the men above when he wants them to raise or lower him. A pulley running on a swivel, attached to an iron spike, is fastened on the edge of the precipice, so that the rope may not chafe.

With a cool head, the dangers attached to 'climming' are very slight indeed; the real danger consists in pieces of the rock becoming detached and falling on the unfortunate 'climmer.' Old Lowney, the Methuselah of cliff-climbers, the veteran of forty years amongst these awful cliffs, told me how he had 'clum' for six-andthirty years, and had met with only one serious accident. A piece of rock, about half the size of his head, detached itself some thirty feet above him, and, though he saw it coming, he could not get out of its way; if it had fallen on his head, it must inevitably have dashed his brains out, but he put up his arm to protect himself. His arm was not broken, but the muscle was absolutely torn from the bone, and it was nearly two years before he could raise it to his head again. He divides his ground into three days' work, so that he takes it all twice a week, when weather permits; in very wet and windy weather he does not 'clim.' Operations commence

about the 14th of May.

For the first nine days he has

a good run of eggs, as the birds that breed on the ledges he visits have most of them laid; for the next nine days eggs are scarce. At the end of that time a second egg has been laid by the birds whose eggs he took during the first nine days, and he has a second run of successful collecting. He considers from two to three hundred eggs a day a good take. He has then a second nine days' 'slack,' and after that comes his midsummer fling,' or 'shut,' as he comically expresses it. This is a very precarious one, and in some seasons is not worth the getting, whilst in others it is nearly equal to the first two takes. This veteran ‘climmer' is of opinion that the Guillemot never lays more than two eggs in a season; and his opinion is of some value, as it is certainly much easier to obtain accurate information respecting the habits of birds at a place like Flamborough, where they are scattered over some miles of cliffs, than at the Farne Islands, where they are crowded together in a dense mass on only four rocks. He also thinks that each bird frequents the same ledge year after year, and lays the same coloured egg every year, although the variety of colour in the eggs of different birds is so wonderfully great. He told me that he used to get a very rare and highly-prized variety, of an almost uniform rich reddish-brown colour, on a certain ledge twice every year, which continued for fifteen years in succession, after which the poor bird died, or was shot, or became a 'shunted dowager.'

The variety in the colour of the eggs of the Guillemot is something wonderful, and it is almost vain to attempt