FORCHHAMMER ON THE BOULDER FORMATION. 265 



stratum, which in one place is the uppermost, in another, at no 

 great distance, is the lowermost. 



This kind of false stratification is seen in recent accumulations 

 on our own coast, under certain circumstances. 



View of thk Cuff at Stevens Klint. 



The annexed diagram represents a portion of the cliff of Stevens 

 Klint. Here (a) represents the white chalk, with nearly horizontal 

 thick layers of firestone ; (b) is the slaty clay and Faxoe lime- 

 stone ; (c) the coralline chalk with its curious contortions of strata ; 

 and (d) a conglomerate made up of great angular lumps of the 

 coralline chalk and firestone, cemented by a calcareous paste. 



As there is no mark of disturbance of the subjacent rocks in 

 that cliff, I suppose that the undulating stratification arises from 

 the material having been deposited in a very much agitated sea, 

 in the condition of pounded fragments, derived from the degrada- 

 tion of rows of coral reef parallel to the direction of the mountain 

 chain, or rather of its axis of old rocks. This view is rendered 

 more probable by examining a formation of the same age as the 

 coralline chalk, which forms a zone parallel to it to the south-west 

 of the chain. This bed is a limestone resembling chalk in colour, 

 but which cannot be used to write with ; it seldom contains fossils ; 

 and though not horizontal, is by no means so strongly undulating 

 as the coralline chalk, and is often intermediate in position between 

 this latter rock and the white chalk. 



I look upon it as formed out of the finer particles of the pounded 

 reef, and deposited at a greater distance than the coralline chalk 

 from the spot where the degradation of the coral reef was going on. 

 It has the same relation to the coralline chalk as the marshes on 

 our western coast have to the sandy sea-shore ; and it seems clear 

 that the disturbing force proceeding from the Scandinavian moun- 

 tains in one place aid in the formation of the coral reefs, but 

 tend also in another quarter to destroy these solid masses of 

 rock.* 



* M. Forchhammer considers that the dependence of the existence of coral 

 reefs on volcanic operations going on beneath the sea is an established fact, and 

 that the coral polyps could only obtain the necessary supply of carbonate of 

 lime to continue their operations by means of a considerable evolution of carbo- 

 nic acid. He also thinks that the forces which elevated Scandinavia first exhi- 



