246 Mr. Lyell on the Cretaceous and Tertiary 



fall down from still water in the most complete disorder. It must not be sup- 

 posed, however, that all the masses containing boulders and erratic blocks 

 in Denmark and Sweden, are void of stratification. This is far from being 

 universally true, and in both these countries, they contain, here and there, 

 marine shells of recent species. It has also been stated that fossils of extinct 

 species, and of the older tertiary periods, are sometimes met with in similar 

 deposits ; but of this fact, I have never yet obtained decisive proof. Nor was 

 I able to procure sufficient data for determining the age of the yellow sand 

 and loam before mentioned, which contains the Venericardia, near Schulau. 



White Chalk and Coralline Limestone of Stevensrlint. 



Having offered these few observations on the newer deposits, I shall next 

 consider the cretaceous rocks which are exposed to view on the eastern coasts 

 of Seeland and Moen. 



On proceeding south from Copenhagen, I first saw the solid rocks make their appearance from 

 underneath the overlying loam and gravel at Stevensklint, or " the Cliffs of Stephen," well known 

 in the Baltic by the lighthouse which crowns them. These cliffs extend for five or six English 

 miles along the shore, with a mean height of about sixty or seventy feet, and are, with few ex- 

 ceptions, perpendicular, and continually wasting away. The lowermost beds are nearly horizon- 

 tal, but have a slight dip to the south-west. They consist of soft white chalk, with parallel layers 

 of flint, and the fossils which have been collected from them agree specifically with those of the 

 upper chalk in England and France. I did not examine the loftiest part of this line of cliff, but 

 Dr. Forchhammer estimates the thickness of white chalk, seen above the level of the sea, to amount 

 to about eighty feet. Beds of nodular flint occur parallel to the stratification, and one thick bed 

 of flint is very conspicuous, and may be traced for a great distance, in a nearly horizontal line. 



Immediately upon the surface of the white chalk, at Stevensklint, is a layer of bituminous 

 laminated clay, from one to several inches in thickness, which marks strongly the beginning of a new 

 set of strata, and to which we have nothing analogous in our upper cretaceous system in England. 

 Above the clay is a yellowish limestone, harder than white chalk, which I shall call the Faxoe 

 limestone, because it is more fully developed at Faxoe*, a locality about ten miles distant. Like 

 the clay, it contains some peculiar fossils, especially many univalve shells, together with other 

 organic remains usually found in chalk. At Stevensklint, the Faxoe limestone varies in thickness 

 from one to three feet, and passes upwards into a white chalky rock, including a great number of 

 broken corals, together with bivalve and other shells common to the white chalk. 



This superincumbent mass I shall call the upper Stevensklint limestone. 

 It is made up almost entirely of broken and pulverized zoophytes, and forms 

 an excellent building stone, for which it is used as often as large fragments 

 fall down upon the beach from the undermined cliff. It is divided into beds 



Misspelt Taxoe, in Brewster's Edinburgh Journal of Science, July, 1828 



