“During my stay at Husum, I had the advantage of passing my evenings very agreeably and profitably at the house of M. Hartz, with his own family, and two Danish officers, Major Behmann, commandant at Husum, and Captain Baron de Barackow. The conversation often turned on the objects of my excursions, and particularly on the natural history of the _coasts_ and of the _islands_; respecting which, M. Hartz obligingly undertook to give me extracts from the chronicles of the country. This led us to speak of the Danish islands; and those officers giving me such descriptions of them, as were very interesting to my object, I begged their permission to write down, in their presence, the principal circumstances which they communicated to me. These will form the first addition to my own observations; I shall afterwards proceed to the information which I obtained from M. Hartz. The two principal islands of the Danish Archipelago, those of Funen and Seeland (or Zeeland), as well as some small islands in the Kattegate, namely, Lenoe, Anholt, and Samsoe, are hilly, and principally composed of _geest_[379]; and in these are found _gravel_ and _blocks of granite_, and of other stones of that class, exactly in the same manner as in the country which I have lately described, and its _islands_ in the North Sea. On the borders of the two first of these Danish islands, there are also _blocks_ in the sea; but only in front of _abrupt_ coasts, as is the case with the islands of Poel and Rugen, and along the coasts of the Baltic. The lands added to these islands of _geest_ are in most part composed of the _sand_ of the sea, the land-waters there being very inconsiderable; and to the south of them have been formed several islands of the same nature, the chief of which are Laland and Falster, near Seeland. These, like the marsh islands in the North Sea, are sand-banks accumulated by the waves, and, when covered with grass, continuing to be farther raised by the sediments deposited between its blades. In the Baltic, where there are no sensible tides, such islands may be inhabited without dikes, as well as the extensions of the coasts; because, being raised to the highest level of that sea, while their declivity under water is very small, and being also more firm in their composition, the waves die away on their shores; and if, in any extraordinary case, the sea rises over them, it leaves on them fresh deposits, which increase their heights. These soils are all perfectly _horizontal_, like those added to the coasts of the Continent.