Sir H. H. Howorth — Dislocation of the Chalk. 303 



portions of some of the chasms may have closed again 



" Their movements," he said, " have produced sharp curves in some 

 places, and in others great faults in the strata of chalk, which are 

 beautifully marked by the lines of black flints. Occasionally 

 a mass of chalk, divided by regular layers of enclosed flints, abuts 

 abruptly against another in which no flints, or scarcely any, are 

 visible. Almost every other imaginable form of dislocation may 

 sometimes be met with. I did not see any flints shattered in situ, 

 and I am told they have rarely been observed." Lyell compares 

 the phenomena at Moen with the large masses of chalk in the 

 Norfolk cliffs, and says the appearances are strictly analogous, but 

 in Norfolk are on a much smaller scale. "In both cases, they compel 

 us to assign a comparatively modem date for an era of partial but 

 violent convulsion, by which the chalk has been deranged." (Trans. 

 Geol. Soc, 2nd ser., v, pp. 252-7.) 



In the abstract of this paper, which was read before the Geological 

 Society, on May 13th, 1835, Lyell says : — " In consequence of the 

 disturbances the chalk has been made to alternate on a great scale 

 with interposed and unconformable strata of clay and sand. These 

 alternations cannot be explained by supposing the detritus of the 

 superincumbent strata to have been washed by running water 

 into clefts ; but masses of the Tertiary beds seem rather to have been 

 engulfed" (Proc. Geol. Soc, ii, 192.) He further adds, that 

 Dr. Forchhammer had discovered similarly disturbed chalk in the 

 Danish island of Seeland. 



In his address to the Geological Society in 1836, Lyell again 

 refers to these dislocations, and says : — " 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 intercala- 

 tions of clay and sand, in the midst of great masses of unconformable 

 chalk, can only, I think, be explained by supposing engulfments of super- 

 incumbent matter, such as are described to occur in earthquakes." 

 (Id., p. 366.) 



Dr. Beck, in a paper communicated to the Geological Society in 

 1835, speaks of the masses of gravel and sand which in Moen have, 

 in consequence of great disturbances, become entangled with portions 

 of disrupted chalk. In the neighbourhood of Thisted, at Thye, to ihe 

 north of Mors, and in the island of Fuur, Dr. Beck observed in 1831, 

 dislocations which affect equally the Tertiary strata and the Chalk. 

 He further says that since the sandy beds of Denmark sometimes 

 contain shells identical with those now living in the German Ocean, 

 it is evident that the chalk in Denmark has been submerged since 

 the existence of the living species of testacea. (Proc. Geol. Soc, ii, 

 p. 217, etc.) 



The next reference I can find to these dislocated chalk beds is in 

 a memoir by C. Puggaard, entitled " Uebersicht der Geologie du Insel 

 Moen," published at Berne in 1851. Lyell speaks of him as a most 

 able and reliable authority. To be clear, he says : — " The escarpment 

 of Moens Klint is about 18,000 metres in length ; along this length 



