Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/367

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CHAP. XVII.
DIRECTIONS OF SUCCESSIVE MOVEMENTS.
347

diameter, which imply that they were carried by ice in a sea of sufficient depth to float large ice-bergs.

4th. After this subsidence, the re-elevation and partial denudation of the cretaceous and glacial beds took place during a general upward movement, like that now experienced in parts of Sweden and Norway.

In regard to the lines of movement in Möen, M. Puggaard believes, after an elaborate comparison of the cliffs with the interior of the island, that they took at least three distinct directions at as many successive eras, all of post-glacial date; the first line running from ESE. to WNW., with lines of fracture at right angles to them; the second running from SSE. to NNW., also with fractures in a transverse direction; and lastly, a sinking in a N. and S. direction, with other subsidences of contemporaneous date running at right angles, or E. and W.

When we approach the north-west end of Möens Klint, or the range of coast above described, the strata begin to be less bent and broken, and, after travelling for a short distance beyond, we find the chalk and overlying drift in the same horizontal position as at the southern end of the Möens Klint. What makes these convulsions the more striking is the fact that in the other adjoining Danish islands, as well as in a large part of Möen itself, both the secondary and tertiary formations are quite undisturbed.

It is impossible to behold such effects of reiterated local movements, all of post-tertiary date, without reflecting that, but for the accidental presence of the stratified drift, all of which might easily, where there has been so much denudation, have been missing, even if it had once existed, we might have referred the vertically and flexures and faults of the rocks to an ancient period, such as the era between the chalk with flints and the Maestricht chalk, or to the time of the latter formation, or to the eocene, or miocene, or older