Sir H. H. Hoivorth — Geological History of the Baltic. 857 



The island of Saltholm is planted in the very middle of the 

 Channel. It is only raised a very few feet above the water, 

 and is mentioned in the thirteenth century as a source of income to 

 the Chapter of Roeskilde (see Geol. Proceedings, xi, 555), showing 

 that there cannot have been much, if any, alteration there for many 

 centuries. Nor, indeed (if we follow the teaching of rational 

 uniformity), can we understand how, in a virtually tideless sea like 

 the Baltic, the water could ever have had such potency as to bore 

 through these channels. 



In the present case we have no room for a draft on unlimited time, 

 a favourite appeal of many geologists (who pursue deductive and not 

 inductive methods), because, as has been pointed out by the Danish 

 archaeologists and geologists, the channels between the islands did 

 not exist when the kitchen middens were laid down (see pt. iii of 

 these papers, p. 12, etc.). 



These arguments can be supplemented by others ; thus, if the 

 substitution of the Litorma sea for the Ancylus sea had been due to 

 the gradual opening of the Baltic channels, we ought to have had 

 a mixing and overlapping of the faunae of the Ancylus and Litorina 

 seas, which is not the case, but there is a complete gap between the 

 two sets of deposits. On the other hand, it is virtually certain that 

 the outpouring of fresh water from the Baltic, which, as we have seen, 

 killed the oysters, Tapes, and other molluscs in the Cattegat, M'as not 

 a gradual process. If it had been so we ought to have some evidence 

 in the kitchen middens themselves, where the shells ought, under 

 this maleficent influence, to have gradually become dwarfed and 

 distorted, as they have elsewhere in similar circumstances, but of this 

 there is no sign. 



Again, if the process of boring these channels was due to the mere 

 slow attrition by the waters on either side, how comes it that we find 

 no kitchen middens at all on the shores of the three great channels, 

 especially in their northern portions, nor yet in the smaller and 

 subsidiary channels between the various islands. Surely all this is 

 overwhelming evidence against the notion of gradual eating back 

 of these channels by slow denuding forces, and the burden of proof of 

 proving the contrary is very much indeed, thrust upon the advocates 

 of the opposite view. I would add, as another positive argument in 

 favour of the openings being the result of fracture, that in the case 

 of the Sound the two sides which approach each other within 

 4,480 yards at Elsinore differ vastly in geological structure. On 

 the Swedish side they ai'e composed of Palaeozoic rocks, and on that 

 of Zealand of chalk, thus showing that the Sound forms a great line 

 of fault where a rupture must sometime have occurred. 



I must, therefore, take it for granted that the Baltic breach was 

 caused by a tectonic movement of the earth's crust, and not by any 

 slow denuding action. This tectonic movement has left, as I now 

 believe, very notable evidences of its potency much beyond the 

 narrow waters Avhich intersect the Danish archipelago, and extending 

 over a large part of the Chalk area of Southern Scandinavia and 

 North Germany and its islands, and had the effect of completely 

 shattering what were once continuous horizontal beds into their 



