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generic resemblance of the shells to those of the tertiary deposits. 

 But none of the species, according to Dr. Beck, agree with any 

 known tertiary fossils, and the secondary genera Ammonite and 

 Baculite occur among the Faxoe shells. Some of the Faxoe corals 

 agree with those of Maestricht, and the newest of the cretaceous for- 

 mations of Seeland and Jutland agree more nearly with those com- 

 monly called the Maestricht beds than with any previously known. 

 Dr. Beck, however, says that the organic remains dift'er on the 

 whole from those of Maestricht, and are more analogous to those 

 found at Kiinruth near Liege. 



The cliffs of Moen, one of the Danish islands, are composed of white 

 chalk with nodular flints. The fossils agree with those of the chalk 

 of England and France, as was shown in the year 1827 by the list 

 of more than one hundred species of them given by Dr. Beck in 

 Leonhard's Taschenbuch der Mineralogie. Two years before, Dr. 

 Forchhammer had published in the Transactions of the Royal Danish 

 Academy his opinion respecting Moen, and extracts from his paper 

 afterwards appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of Science for July 

 1828. He then considered the Moen chalk to be an integral part 

 of the same tertiary deposit of sand and clay which contains erratic 

 blocks in Denmark ; and in confirmation of this opinion he gave 

 sections representing an alternation of chalk with beds of tertiary 

 sand, clay, and loam. Being desirous of inquiring into this singular 

 phaenomenon I visited the Moen cliffs in company with Dr. Forch- 

 hammer inl8S4, and came to a different conclusion. I have explained 

 to the Society my reasons for inferring that the association of the 

 cretaceous and tertiary deposits may be referred to the violent dis- 

 turbances which the chalk strata have undergone. The cretaceous 

 beds are curved, vertical, or shifted, and, upon the whole, more de- 

 ranged than the chalk in Purbeck or the Isle of Wight. In fact 

 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 intercalations of clay and sand in the midst of 

 great masses of unconformable chalk can only, I think, be explained 

 by supposing engulfments of superincumbent matter, such as are 

 described to occur during earthquakes. These appearances are 

 analogous to those exhibited by masses of chalk nearly enveloped 

 in crag near Trimmingham in Norfolk, although the Danish phae- 

 nomena are on a much grander scale. Dr. Forchhammer did not 

 fully concur in these opinions in 1834, but he appears to have since 

 adopted them for the most part, in an excellent memoir on the geo- 

 logy of Denmark, a copy of which has been lately sent by him to 

 the Society, accompanied by a small coloured map of the whole of 

 Denmark and Bornholm. 



As the fossils of the upper cretaceous series of Denmark are very 

 peculiar, and of so much interest from their position, I have plea- 

 sure in stating that figures and descriptions of them are in the course 

 of publication by Dr. Beck, and I may add that we owe tliis work 

 to the liberality and the zealous interest taken in our science by an 



