218 



To the south of these coal-bearing strata are beds of siliceous and 

 calcareous sand, containing between 30 and 40 species of shells,which 

 also occur in the upper green sand of England : and in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Arnager is a small patch of greyish white chalk with very 

 few flints, but abundance of fossils, agreeing with those of the lower 

 white chalk without flints at Southerham near Lewes. 



In Denmark Proper the oldest formation belongs to beds of the 

 cretaceous series, younger than those in the island of Bornholm. 

 The lowest strata consist of pure white, soft chalk, with many layers 

 of black, nodular flints, and contain more than 300 species of fossils. 

 Among these remains. Ammonites are extremely scarce, Marsupites 

 are unknown j and the remains of fishes, except teeth of the shark fa- 

 mily, are very rare: but small zoophytes and microscopic foraminifera 

 are very abundant ; and, in some instances, animals of the sponge 

 tribe, replaced by flint or chalcedony, but retaining their form, con- 

 stitute complete beds. This portion of the chalk series forms, very 

 generally, the lower part of the strata in Seeland and Jutland, and the 

 whole of the cliffs of Moen. But in Moen masses of gravel and sand 

 have, in consequence of great disturbances, become entangled with 

 portions of disrupted chalk, in the manner explained by Mr. Lyell in 

 a paper lately read before the Society*. 



This white chalk is immediately overlaid, in Seeland and elsewhere, 

 by the Faxoe beds, consisting almost entirely of hard, yellowish 

 limestone, susceptible of a polish. They contain some of the cha- 

 racteristic fossils of the white chalk and some which are peculiar, 

 belonging to the genera Area, Modiola, Venus, Trochus, Fusus, Vo- 

 luta, Oliva, Cypraea, Nautilus, &c. ; while in the quarries at Faxoe 

 (Seeland) they are composed so largely of zoophytes that they may 

 justly be regarded as a coral reef. This division of the cretaceous 

 series attains at Faxoe a thickness of more than 40 feet, but it is only 

 between 2 and 4 feet thick at Stevensklint, where it may be traced 

 for 3 or 4 miles resting upon the white chalk and covered by other 

 strata of this series. The Faxoe beds appear also in some places in 

 Jutland as in the Island of Mors, the cliff's near Grenaa, &c. 



These beds have been imagined to be perfectly parallel to those of 

 Maestricht, but the organic remains difl"er considerably ; and are more 

 analogous to those found at Kiinruth near Liege, Among the fossils 

 common to the last locality and the Faxoe beds, are Daculites Faujasii, 

 Nautilusfricator (Beck) , Fusus elongatus(Beck) jandTerebratulasubgi' 

 gantea (Schlotheim). Dr. Beck also states that the Nautilus D aniens 

 is not identical with the Nautilus aganiticus of the lias, though Von 

 Buch considers that it is : he likewise states that he has not been able 

 to identify any of the Faxoe fossils with those of the oolitic series, or 

 with the shells of Gosau, or with any of the tertiary fossils hitherto 

 described. 



The cretaceous beds which immediately cover the Faxoe deposit in 

 Stevensklint, consistof a whitish and hardish chalk, including so great 

 a number of broken and almost pulverised zoophytes that the rock is 

 sometimes entirely composed of them. The bivalves and echinoder- 



* Proceedings, No. 41. Vol. IL p. 191. 



