HOLMFIRTH

holmfirth, an urban district in the holmfirth parliamentary division of the west riding of yorkshire, england, on and holme and the ribble, 6 m. s. of huddersfield, and on the lancashire and yorkshire railway. pop. (1901) 8977. the valley, walled by bold hills, is very picturesque. in 1852 great destruction was wrought in the town by the bursting of a reservoir in the vicinity. the large industrial population is employed in woollen manufactories, and in the neighbouring stone quarries. holocaust (gr. [greek: holokauston], or [greek: holokauton], wholly burnt), strictly a sacrifice wholly destroyed by fire, such as the sacrifices of the jews, described in the pentateuch as "whole burnt offerings" (see sacrifice). the term is now often applied to a catastrophe on a large scale, whether by fire or not, or to a massacre or slaughter. holocene (from gr. [greek: holos], whole, [greek: kainos], recent), in geology, the time division which embraces the youngest of all the formations; it is equivalent to the "recent" of some authors. the name was proposed in 1860 by p. gervais. the oldest deposits that may be included are those containing neolithic implements; deposits of historic times should also be grouped here; presumably the youngest are those to be chronicled by the last man. the holocene formations obviously include all the varieties of deposits which are accumulating at the present day: the gravels and alluvia of rivers; boulder clays, moraines and fluvio-glacial deposits; estuarine, coastal and abyssal deposits of the seas, and their equivalents in lakes; screes, taluses, wind-borne dust and sand and desert formations; chemical deposits from saline waters; peat, diatomite, marls, foraminiferal and other oozes; coral, algal and shell banks, and other organic deposits; mud, lava and dust deposits of volcanic origin and extrusions of asphalt and pitch; to all these must be added the works of man.