1868.] CLAKK — SAXOK SWITZERLAND. 557 



them, as it were, and the only result of its movement would bo to 

 grind the faces of the rocks and any body which might have found 

 its way between them. The elevation of the Jurassic fragments at 

 Hohnstein, and at the one or two other places where they are met 

 with, is most probably due to a configuration of the face of the 

 granite at those parts favourable to such a result. The phenomena 

 presented are such as might be expected under the circumstances : 

 we have immediately below the granite a bed of clay resulting from 

 the attrition and decomposition of that rock, then a mass of Jurassic 

 conglomerate, and below this, and next the Quader, a thicker bed of 

 sandstone-conglomerate resulting from the grinding off of the ends 

 of the strata of that rock. 



This extensive deposit of sandstone may, I think, be referred to 

 the agency of a strong under-current, running from north to south, 

 through an arm of the sea, which must have existed at this place 

 during the Cretaceous period. This current, sweeping over the 

 range of submarine hills which extended in an east and west direc- 

 tion for about 140 miles, rising gradually from the north and ter- 

 minating in a precipitous face to the south, through the whole of that 

 distance would bring with it the detritus brought down by the 

 melting of glaciers and snow in the higher latitudes, and by rivers 

 along the shores. This detritus would be naturally deposited in 

 the dead water which would lie to the southward of the ledge ; and 

 this deposit would stretch further and further south as the granite 

 wall rose higher and higher, until the new relations between land 

 and sea, brought about by the subsequent geological revolutions, 

 had forced the waters to find some other channel. 



4. The conditions under ivliich the Basalt is met with. — The 

 Erzgebirge chain, of which the Saxon Switzerland may be regarded 

 as a prolongation, seems to owe its present elevation to a succession 

 of upheavals of the granite, gneiss, and schists lying to the north of 

 a long fracture running in an E.N.E. direction from the Fichtelge- 

 birge to beyond the Elbe at Tetschen, in Bohemia, and probably 

 joining the one treated of in the foregoing section, under a very acute 

 angle at some point E.N.E. from that place. 



E-ising with an easy slope from the north-west to a height in some 

 parts of about 3000 feet, it falls suddenly to the south-east, along 

 its whole length, leaving a well-defined ridge throughout. An ideal 

 section of the chain is given in Cotta's ' Deutschland's Boden.' 



The eruption of the basalt must have taken place at a compara- 

 tively recent period, as it has not only broken through the granite 

 and schists of the main portions of the chain, but also through the 

 sandstone of the Saxon Switzerland, which forms its north-eastern 

 extremity* ; and it is a significant fact that, although it comes to 



* The summits of four of the most elevated points in the Erzgebirge are 

 basalt — namely, Erbner Hohe, 3172 feet (French), Biirenstein, 2740 feet, Pohl- 

 berg, 2548 feet, and the Scheibenberg, 2443 feet ; between the basalt and the 

 primary rocks at each of these places there occur, according to Gutbier, layers 

 of Tertiary clay and gravel. This would bring the period of the last general 

 upheaval in this region down to a time at least as recent as the breaking through 

 of the basalt. 



