1846.] MURCHISON ON THE SCANDINAVIAN DRIFT. 355 



Holland, where it forms the " polder " of that country. In Den- 

 mark these materials have been shown by Professor Forchhammer to 

 have been aggregated at diflferent periods, the earliest of which he 

 believes to be contemporaneous with the sub-apennine formations, 

 and from that comparatively ancient date has worked out a succes- 

 sion of block and erratic operations at two other epochs, and has 

 shown how such operations are to a certain extent proceeding even 

 at the present day. 



Believing that Russia in Europe and the north of Germany were, 

 like Denmark and Holstein, beneath the sea during long periods, as 

 well from the fact that the fossils of the earlier tertiary epochs there 

 occur, though at wide intervals, as from knowing that the shells 

 of the post-pliocene period have there been associated with the up- 

 permost drifts, we are led to conclude, that with the progress of re- 

 search the details of the succession of aqueous deposits may, in the 

 sequel, be worked out in some of these low countries as they have 

 been by Professor Forchhammer in Denmark and Holstein, as laid 

 down in the geological map of those countries. 



Passing however to Sweden itself, where the phaenomena of drift 

 are more simple, and referring to the published work on Russia for 

 an account of the detritus which has been transported into Prussia 

 and Poland, I will commence with an account of the superficial phaB- 

 nomena in Scania, the most southern province of Sweden, and there- 

 fore the furthest distant from the great source of all the erratics. 

 The southern and south-western portions of Scania are flat, and the 

 fundamental rocks chiefly cretaceous, with two detached masses of 

 oolitic age at Hoganaes and Hor, covered with detritus of sand, 

 mud and rolled northern boulders*. In this tract, however, few large 

 distinct and angular superficial blocks are seen, and the whole has 

 still the Danish type. With this external coincidence it is further 

 remarkable as being the only portion of Sweden in which remains of 

 great land quadrupeds have been found ; thus proving, that whilst 

 all the other parts of the country (to be alluded to in the sequel) 

 may have remained under the sea, the lands of Scania, like those 

 of the continent to the south, must at all events have been raised 

 above the waters, and inhabited at an sera immediately before, if 

 not contemporaneous with, the existence of man. This inference 

 has been chiefly arrived at by the researches of Professor Nilsson of 

 the University of Lund, who has discovered in bogs the remains, 

 and even the entire skeletons, of the Bos Urus or B. primigenius, 

 and also of the bison, or Bos Aurochs, the one a species now ex- 

 tinct, the other living in the forests of Lithuania. In both cases, 

 these are associated with the remains of deer and other land animals; 

 and a skeleton of the Bos Urus was extracted by Nilsson himself, 

 from beneath ten feet of peat near Ystadt, the horns of the animal 

 having been found deeply buried in the subjacent blue clay on 

 which the bog has accumulated. This specimen is not only most 

 remarkable as being the only entire skeleton yet found of an animal 



* Sec the General Map in the work ou Russia and iho Vr.\\ Mountains. 



