302 Sir R. R. Roworth— Dislocation of the Chalk. 



charts show a chalk bottom off the eastern coast of England, both 

 off Kent and Essex, indicating that this depression is a synclinal 

 hollow in the chalk. 



It is equally probable, although of this we have not the same 

 direct evidence, that the Dogger Bank is another chalk down covered 

 with sand, and it is not unlikely that some of the chalk lumps 

 brought in by the Southwold fishermen have been dredged on the 

 Dogger. Between that bank and Denmark there has been some 

 denudation, for when we reach the Danish coast, some of the beds 

 below the chalk are exposed : perhaps this has been an area stripped 

 of its covering of chalk, like the Fen depression and the Weald. 



Proceeding still eastward, we come to the chalk of Jutland, and 

 then to the broken and dislocated chalk beds of Moen and the other 

 Danish islands, which present such a remarkable parallel to the 

 dislocated chalk beds of England, and the discussion of which by 

 the foremost German geologists has apparently largel}' escaped our 

 own writers — the only person known to me who in recent years 

 has referred to them, and he only casually, being Professor James 

 Geikie. 



I will give a short conspectus of the most recent views. 

 First, as to Lyell's observations and conclusions. He says : — 

 " The chalk in the cliffs at Moen, which are from 300 to 500 

 feet high, is in beds partially vertical, partly curved, and has 

 undergone extreme disturbance. As we find a range of the 

 English chalk in Purbeck and the Isle of Wight, where the 

 strata are much dislocated and thrown on their edges, while 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of the line of convulsion strata 

 of similar chalk are traced over a wide area in horizontal 

 or slightly tilted position, so in Denmark we remark the like 

 contrast between the state of the white chalk-with-flints which 

 occurs in the neighbouring islands of Seeland and Moen. . . . 

 The Moen cliffs are subdivided by deep ravines into separate and 

 distinct masses. . . . They are, in fact, narrow clefts, coinciding with 

 lines of fracture and dislocation. . . . The first opening or narrow 

 valley is near a rock called Taleren : a deep ravine here comes down 

 at right angles to the line of coast. . . . Another great line of fracture 

 further south, at Sommerspiret, where another ravine, filled with 

 clay and sand, comes down to the sea. Here, as afterwards, in a 

 third break in the cliffs further south, I observed the strata of chalk 

 dipping on the opposite sides of the ravine towards the hollow. . . . 

 The cliff called Dronningestolen is between 300 and 400 feet high, 

 nearly three-fourths of which are perpendicular, but the lower part 

 is a sloping mass of solid chalk-with-flints, the beds of flint being 

 highly inclined towards the sea. . . . Two rents descend per- 

 pendicularly, and terminate, the one at a depth of 100 feet and 

 the other of more than 150 feet, from the top of the cliff. They are 

 filled with sand, and near the termination are two caves, one of 

 which is 14 feet and the other 16 feet high. They may be sections 

 of subterranean passages, and are distinctly connected with dis- 

 locations in the chalk." .... Lyell suggests, that the upper 



