Chalk Formation of Denmark. 67 



1. Chalk of Stevensklint, completely analogous to that of 

 England ; 2. a bed of clay ; 3. a bed of limestone, containing 

 such genera of fossils as are generally considered characteris- 

 tic of the tertiary rocks ; 4. a deposition of chalk-like 

 limestone, with the fossils of the chalk formation ; 5. sand, 

 loam, gravel, with boulder-stones containing subordinate beds 

 of a chalk-like marl, with fossils of the chalk formation ; and 

 we might consider all these beds now mentioned as belonging 

 to the same formation. But the limestone of Taxoe, which is 

 evidently interposed between No. 1 and 4, is, if we allow fossils 

 to serve as a principal point of determination, evidently of a 

 newer formation. It is however pervaded by strata which, as 

 to their fossils, are analogous to the chalk, but differ so widely 

 in point of stratification from the common chalk, from which 

 it is only 'separated by a bed of a few feet thickness. The 

 enormous curvatures of the coral lite-limestone, described be- 

 fore, can by no means be the result of an elevation or a de- 

 struction of the originally regular strata, occasioned by earth- 

 quakes or similar causes, because the chalk beneath it is quite 

 regularly stratified, and deviates very little from the horizon- 

 tal plane; while the upper limestone, which, for four or five miles 

 along the coast, everywhere may be seen resting upon it, shows 

 such great irregularities, which, therefore, must be occasioned 

 by some power confined to the formation of this rock, and 

 which was not in activity during the formation of the chalk. 

 Similar irregularities are found in all the cliffs ; and the direc- 

 tion of the strata at Moen, but on a still greater scale, and 

 similar irregularities, show the enormous depositions of sand, 

 loam, gravel, whose surface consists of an irregular succession 

 of round hills, and basin-shaped valleys, representing the un- 

 dulations of a stormy sea. Many reasons concur to make 

 it highly probable that this sand and gravel belong to the 

 tertiary formation. No such depositions are known to exist 

 in the latter period of the chalk, while the argile plastique has 

 such beds. On the island of Rugen this gravel and loam has 

 subordinate beds of brown coal. It contains both in loose sand 

 and in concrete masses the fossils of the calcaire grossier, 

 not only the genera agreeing, but even many species. 



Thus we are in a dilemma to choose between two opinions 



