Sir H. H. Hoivorth — Geological History of the Baltic, 361 



have teen long ago destroyed, and, like similar remains elsewhere, 

 they attest a sudden submergence. 



I mention all this to establish a prima facie case. Let us now 

 turn to more direct evidence as displayed in the Danish islands and 

 on the South Baltic coast. The greater part of the Danish islands 

 are covered with drift beds in manj- places o£ enormous thickness. 

 These largely hide the subjacent chalk. It is not so covered every- 

 where, however. In the great Danish island of Zealand and in its 

 small satellite Moen the chalk is in part exposed, and in both we 

 have some valuable evidence for our purpose. In the former the 

 part of the chalk that is visible is in a great measure undisturbed, 

 but not everywhere. 



Eordam tells us the chalk of Zealand is for the most part covered 

 with diluvian beds sometimes 60 metres thick and enclosing large 

 masses of chalk. He describes a section thus : " On voyait la Craie 

 recouverte d'argile morainique jaune-rouge, contenant aussi de 

 grandes portions de masses de Craie trituree et petree d'argile 

 et de pierre. La figure 1, p. 8, fait voir incruste dans I'argile 

 morainique un assez grand bloc de Craie de forme irreguliere " 

 (n.ed., vi, 128). 



Let us now turn to the small and geologically celebrated island 

 of Moen, separated by a narrow passage from Zealand, the land 

 on both sides of which channel consists of chalk. The facts there 

 were long ago carefully collected on the spot and their inevitable 

 lesson pointed out by two excellent witnesses, namely, Lyell and 

 Eorchhammer. Lyell, writing in 1873, speaks of the phenomena 

 presented by the island as being of a class which were thought 

 by the earlier geologists to belong exclusively to epochs anterior 

 to the existing fauna and flora, and quotes as examples faults 

 and violent local dislocations of the rocks and sharp bendings and 

 foldings of the strata, which we so often behold in mountain chains, 

 and sometimes in low countries, especially where the rock formations 

 are of ancient dates. He then proceeds to quote the island of 

 Moen as a striking illustration of such convulsions, to which he 

 assigns a post-Glacial or Pleistocene date. He describes it as about 

 60 miles in circumference and as consisting of white chalk several 

 hundred feet thick, overlaid by boulder-clay and sand made up of 

 several divisions, some stratified and some unstratified, the whole 

 having a mean thickness of 60 feet, but being sometimes twice that 

 thickness, and containing in one of its oldest members fossil marine 

 shells of existing species. He goes on to say, "Throughout the 

 greatest part of the island the strata of the drift are undisturbed and 

 horizontal, as are those of the adjacent chalk, but on the north-eastern 

 coast they have been through a certain area, bent, folded, and shifted, 

 togethe7' ivith the heds of the underlying Cretaceous formation.^'' " AVithin 

 this area they have," he says, "been even more deranged than in the 

 English chalk-with-flints along the central axis of the Isle of Wight 

 in Hampshire, or at Purbeck in Dorsetshire. The whole displacement 

 of the chalk is evidently posterior in date to the origin of the drift 

 since the beds of the latter are horizontal or inclined, curved, or 

 vertical where the chalk displays signs of similar derangement." 



