T. F. Jamiesoh — Climate of the Loess Period. 71 



the Loess of Central Europe that most German geologists seem now 

 to believe that both have been produced by very similar causes. 



A curious and interesting confirmation of this opinion has in . 

 recent years been got by Dr. Nehring, 1 of Berlin, who has discovered, 

 in the Loess deposits of Brunswick and other parts of Germany 

 numerous remains of animals, such as the Alactaga jaculns, Sper- 

 mophilus rufescens, Arctomys bobac, and. various species of Arvicola, 

 which are found only in very dry open districts like the Steppes of 

 Eastern Russia and Siberia. He accordingly maintains that at the 

 time these animals flourished in the heart of Germany, Central 

 Europe must have had a very dry continental climate. In order to 

 account for this dry steppe-like climate, Nehring supposes that 

 Europe had then extended much further into the Atlantic towards 

 the west and north-west, and that there was perhaps even a land 

 communication between it and North America. 



My object in this paper is to show that there is no necessity for 

 invoking this great extension of our continent to the westward, and 

 that the dry climate which Nehring wants would arise as a necessary 

 consequence from the train of events which we know took place 

 during the Glacial period. It is now admitted on all hands that 

 when the great Scandinavian Glacier attained its maximum develop- 

 ment, it came down like a flood into the plains of Poland and 

 Germany, and advanced onwards until it reached the frontiers 

 of Bohemia. 



To the eastward it seems to have stretched over the plains of 

 Russia as far at least as Moscow, if not for some distance beyond it. 

 Such being the case, we need not be surprised to find that it ap- 

 proached the shores of Britain in its westward march, and coalesced 

 with the ice which was streaming out in all directions from Scotland 

 and the North of England. In fact, if the British ice had not been 

 in gi-eat force, it is evident the Scandinavian glacier (judging from 

 its range to the south and east) must have invaded this country to 

 a considerable extent, as indeed it seems actually to have done 

 along part of the English coast. We know from the investigations 

 of Messrs. Home and Peach that its influence was felt at the Orkney 

 and Shetland Islands, while our own Geological Survey, together with 

 Otto Torell and the late Mr. Carvill Lewis, have found traces of its 

 presence from Norfolk to Holderness. Well, what does this imply? 

 The Baltic and the German Ocean must have been for the time 

 abolished, and the western border of the ice would have been thrust 

 out into the Atlantic somewhere probably about the 100-fathom line 

 or beyond it, running along between Shetland and the Faroe Islands, 

 and lying out beyond the Hebrides and the Irish shore. The sea 

 also between Norway and Iceland would probably have been frozen 

 over during most of the year. Here then we have conditions which 

 amply suffice to have produced a dry continental climate in Central 

 Europe ; for we have a thousand miles of ice lying between it and 

 the open water of the ocean all round to the north and north-west. 



1 Geol. Mag. Feb. 1883 ; also, Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie, etc., 1889, p. 66. 



