Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/363

Rh of the Isle of Wight in Hampshire, or of Purbeck in Dorsetshire. The whole displacement of the chalk is evidently posterior in date to the origin of the drift, since the beds of the latter are horizontal where the fundamental chalk is horizontal, and inclined, curved, or vertical where the chalk displays signs of similar derangement. Although I had come to these conclusions respecting the structure of Möen in 1835, after devoting several days in company with Dr. Forchhammer to its examination, I should have hesitated to cite the spot as exemplifying convulsions on so grand a scale, of such extremely modern date, had not the island been since thoroughly investigated by a most able and reliable authority, the Danish geologist, Professor Puggaard, who has published a series of detailed sections of the cliffs.

These cliffs extend through the north-eastern coast of the island, called Möens Klint, where the chalk precipices are bold and picturesque, being 300 and 400 feet high, with tall beech-trees growing on their summits, and covered here and there at their base with huge taluses of fallen drift, verdant with wild shrubs and grass, by which the monotony of a continuous range of white chalk cliffs is prevented. In the low part of the island, at, fig. 47, or the southern extremity of the line of section above alluded to, the drift is horizontal, but when we reach , a change, both in the height of the cliffs and in the inclination of the strata, begins to be perceptible, and the chalk No. 1 soon makes its appearance from beneath the overlying members of the drift Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5.

This chalk, with its layers of flints, is so like that of England as to require no description. The incumbent