72 T. F. Jamieson — Climate of the Loess Period. 



To the east there was nothing but land, and to the south the great 

 snowy Chain of the Alps shut off in a great measure the influence 

 of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Unless it was from the 

 neighbourhood of the Bay of Biscay, it is difficult to see where the 

 rain could come from ; and even that is a long way off, with hilly 

 ground between. Now this state of matters would have been more 

 effective than a mere extension of the land such as Dr. Nehring has 

 contemplated, for such a mass of ice lying along the north-western 

 border of Europe would act as a powerful condenser upon the moist 

 winds corning in off the Atlantic. Precipitation would therefore 

 take place before the clouds could reach the heart of Germany, and 

 the climate there would be one of extreme dryness. France would 

 not be so much affected ; but in travelling from France eastward 

 through Germany to Austria the dryness would steadily increase. 

 Accordingly it is found that the extent of the ancient glaciers in 

 these regions rapidly diminished as they are traced to the eastward. 

 In the Carpathian Mountains they were small and confined to the 

 higher parts of the chain, as we know from the investigations of 

 Partsch (Die Gletscher der Vorzeit in den Karpathen). 



The Loess on the other hand seems to augment in volume east- 

 ward from the coast of France, as we should expect on the theory 

 I am advocating. It thickens in the Valley of the Ehine, and is 

 largely developed in the basin of the Danube, while over Southern 

 Bussia it extends in a continuous mantle. 



In England there is a slight suspicion of it in the south-eastern 

 counties. Much of the brick-earth in that quarter probably consists 

 of wind-driven dust mixed at times with sediment proceeding from 

 the muddy water of melting snow and outbursts of rain. There is 

 even some trace of Nehring's Steppe-fauna at Salisbury, where Dr. 

 Blackmore ] got remains of Lemmings, Spermophilus, etc., along 

 with the bones and egg of the Wild Goose. 



When geologists attempted to account for these Loess-beds solely 

 by the action of water, they found themselves involved in con- 

 siderable perplexity, as may be seen in Sir Charles Lyell's chapter 

 on the subject in his " Antiquity of Man," and also in the papers of 

 the late Thomas Belt ; for this deposit often occurs on the sides and 

 tops of hills to which flooded streams could hardly be supposed ever 

 to reach. Moreover, the characteristic shells which are everywhere 

 found in the Loess are not aquatic or fluviatile species, but belong 

 to kinds which have a northern range over cold dry regions. 



Penck, in his Landerkunde von Europa, points out in regard to the 

 Loess that its central point of development lies quite outside the 

 Glacier region, and that it appears in places which were inaccessible 

 both to the ice itself and the melting water proceeding from it. He 

 looks upon it as "an interglacial steppe formation." 



If the Loess were a deposit from the muddy water that issued 



from beneath the old glaciers, how comes it that we do not find it 



in Scandinavia and Scotland where glaciers abounded ? Neither do 



we hear of it in Eastern Canada or New England. It appears, 



1 Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xx. p. 192, 1864. 



