1846.] MURCHISON ON THE SCANDINAVIAN DRIFT. 357 



cally displayed in Scania; but in traversing the country from Lund 

 on the west to Christianstad on the east, the traveller first passes 

 over a ridge of gneiss and crystalline rocks on which a few large 

 erratics have been lodged, and then over sands of nine or ten En- 

 glish miles in width, throughout which tract not a single block 

 can be detected. Passing however the lake of Womb-sjon (whose 

 eastern shores are occupied by Silurian strata and porphyry), 

 numberless blocks are again found on the surface of the argilla- 

 ceous soil, and are seen at intervals and in separate trainees over- 

 spreading the plateau between Kloster Ofved and Andraruni. It 

 is only however on nearing Christianstad on the north that the 

 phaenomena begin to assume the distinct division which is so clearly 

 indicated in many other parts of Sweden, and on which I shall 

 mainly dwell in this memoir. The village of Degeberga, for ex- 

 ample, which is situated at the northern limit of this plateau or 

 high ground, may be cited as a spot, the inspection of which at 

 once explains relations which are constantly repeated towards the 

 north. Sandy hills covered with clusters of large blocks there rise 

 to the north to heights of about 300 feet above the great plain of 

 Christianstad, this plain however being for the most part devoid of 

 such great erratics. In some of these hills where subsidences have 

 occurred, vertical thicknesses of sand layers are seen, fort}'^ to fifty 

 feet thick, beneath the great blocks, all of which are more or less 

 angular, and some of them eight to ten feet in diameter. 



Here then we have sandy accumulations, which from their form and 

 siliceous texture have all the appearance of having been fashioned 

 by currents of water, and these are at once surmounted by isolated 

 groups of angular blocks, which from their composition must have 

 been derived from the countries in the north (the substrata to the 

 south being of an entirely different character), and which must have 

 been transported across the wide low tracts which lie around Chris- 

 tianstad. Such blocks, and all traces of coarse superficial detritus, 

 are gradually lost as the ground declines in altitude towards the 

 marshy and muddy soil in the neighbourhood of the city. (The 

 diagram fig. 1 will sufficiently explain these relations.) 



This diagram represents siliceous sands covered with angular blocks, extending from some distance 

 south of Degeberga to the plains of clay which reach to Christianstad on the north. 



In the western portion of the province of Bleking which ranges 

 down to the Baltic, the ground being flat with much argillaceous 

 covering, there is little to be observed, except a pretty general dis- 

 tribution of rounded boulders of no great size, and an occasional 

 hillock covered with larger blocks ; but in traversing tlic higher 



