Geological Society. 413 



deposits formerly supposed by Dr. Forchhammer to exist in the 

 Danish islands. In a memoir published in the " Edinburgh Philoso* 

 phical Journal of Science" for July 1828, Dr. Forchhammer had de- 

 scribed the white chalk of Seeland as covered by a coralline lime- 

 stone, and had imagined the white chalk of Moen to be a formation 

 higher in the series than this coralline limestone. He had also con- 

 sidered certain deposits of blue clay, sand, and gravel, seen in the 

 cliff's of Moen, as alternating with the white chalk. 



Mr. Lyell examined, in company with Dr. Forchhammer, the cliffs 

 of Seeland and Moen, during the summer of 1834, and the following 

 are the results at which he has arrived. The two formations of which 

 Denmark and Danish Holstein chiefly consist, are, chalk, and an over- 

 lying tertiary deposit. Part of the latter resembles in composition the 

 argillaceous and sandy beds of the English crag. Another part cor- 

 responds with deposits usually called diluvial, especially those asso- 

 ciated with the English crag, in parts of Norfolk. Large erratic 

 blocks are also strewed over the surface of Denmark, connected with, 

 and sometimes buried in, the gravel or "diluvium". In some sec- 

 tions on the banks of the Elbe, the yellow tertiary sands are divided 

 regularly into thin strata, and are exposed for a thickness of about 

 200 feet. Unstratified masses of blue clay, of great thickness, are 

 also there seen, in which gravel, containing every kind of rock, from 

 granite to chalk, occurs. 



There is often an abrupt passage from the stratified to the unstra- 

 tified parts of the formation, which the author compares to the Nor- 

 folk and Suffolk crag, from its general appearance, but without pre- 

 tending to decide its relative age in the tertiary series. Fossils are 

 rare, except those washed out of older strata. A few recent shells 

 have been found near Segeberg, and at other points, and two of ex- 

 tinct species at Schulan on the Elbe. 



The white chalk of Denmark is characterized by the same fossils 

 as those of the upper chalk of France and England, and occurs at 

 Stevensklint in Seeland, and in the cliffs of Moen. On the coast 

 at Stevensklint, and at several places in the interior of the same 

 island, particularly at Faxoe, a newer limestone occurs, consist- 

 ing, for the most part, of fragments of coral, cemented together by 

 a chalky matrix. It is separated from the white chalk by a thin 

 seam of bituminous clay, containing marine shells and impressions of 

 plants. The limestone contains beds of flint, like those of the white 

 chalk, but more cherty, and usually in continuous layers j and these 

 are sometimes disposed diagonally to the general lines of stratifica- 

 tion. The author presumes that this coral limestone, which he calls 

 the Faxoe limestone, may be the equivalent of the Maestricht beds, 

 as, like them, it contains some fossils identical with those of the chalk, 

 intermixed with others which belong to genera more usually charac- 

 teristic of tertiary formations*. 



* [As Dr. Forchhammer states that in Seeland this coralline limestone 

 reposes upon a formation which is the equivalent of the calcaire grossier, it 

 seems probable that it may itself be the equivalent of the lower or coral- 

 line crag of Mr. Charlesworth ; especially as it would appear, from a com- 

 parison of the details given by Dr. Forchhammer with the above notice of 



