Geological Society. 321 
generic resemblance of the shells to those of the tertiary deposits. 
But none of the species, according to Dr. Beck, agree with any 
known tertiary fossils, and the secondary genera Ammonite and 
Baculite occur among the Faxoe shells. Some of the Faxoe corals 
agree with those of Maestricht, and the newest of the cretaceous for- 
mations of Seeland and Jutland agree more nearly with those com- 
monly called the Maestricht beds than with any previously known. 
Dr. Beck, however, says that the organic remains differ on the 
whole from those of Maestricht, and are more analogous to those 
found at Kinruth near Liege.* 
The cliffs of Méen, one of the Danish islands, are composed of white 
chalk with nodular flints. The fossils agree with those of the chalk 
of England and France, as was shown in the year 1827 by the list 
of more than one hundred species of them given by Dr. Beck in 
Leonhard’s Taschenbuch der Mineralogie. ‘Two years before, Dr. 
Forchhammer had published in the Transactions of the Royal Danish 
Academy his opinion respecting Méen, and extracts from his paper 
afterwards appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of Science for July 
1828. He then considered the Méen chalk to be an integral part 
of the same tertiary deposit of sand and clay which contains erratic 
blocks in Denmark; and in confirmation of this opinion he gave 
sections representing an alternation of chalk with beds of tertiary 
sand, clay, and loam. Being desirous of inquiring into this singular 
phenomenon I visited the Méen cliffs in company with Dr. Forch- 
hammer in 1834, and came to a different conclusion. I have explained 
to the Society my reasons for inferring that the association of the 
cretaceous and tertiary deposits may be referred to the violent dis- 
turbances which the chalk strata have undergone. The cretaceous 
beds are curved, vertical, or shifted, and, upon the whole, more de- 
ranged than the chalk in Purbeck or the Isle of Wight. In fact 
the movements have been on so great a scale that masses of the 
overlying clay and sand have subsided bodily into large fissures 
and chasms, intersecting the chalk to the depth of several hundred 
feet. Some of the intercalations of clay and sand in the midst of 
great masses of unconformable chalk can only, I think, be explained 
by supposing engulfments of superincumbent matter, such as are 
described to occur during earthquakes. These appearances are 
analogous to those exhibited by masses of chalk nearly enveloped 
in crag near Trimmingham in Norfolk, although the Danish phe- 
nomena are on a much grander scale. Dr. Forchhammer did not 
fully concur in these opinions in 1834, but he appears to have since 
adopted them for the most part, in an excellent memoir on the geo- 
logy of Denmark, a copy of which has been lately sent by him to 
the Society, accompanied by a small coloured map of the whole of 
Denmark and Bornholm. 
As the fossils of the upper cretaceous series of Denmark are very 
peculiar, and of so much interest from their position, I have plea- 
sure in stating that figures and descriptions of them are in the course 
of publication by Dr. Beck, and I may add that we owe this work 
* On this subject see Lond, and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. vii. p. 413, note.) 
