58 Dr. A. Nehring—Fauna of the Loess in Central Europe. 
6. We may assume that Europe at that time had a different con- 
firuration from its present one, and that Germany was more distant 
from the Atlantic Ocean than now.’ There exist also other proofs, 
which admit the supposition that Europe, during that epoch, ex- 
tended itself further west and north-west, that there existed even an 
isthmus between North-west Europe and North-east America.’ 
7. It is virtually not “out of the regions of possibility,” that 
during the Loess-epoch similar meteorological conditions prevailed 
in Central Europe, as Baron Richthofen requires for his Loess 
theory, and as I supposed for the neighbourhood of Westergeln and 
a great part of Germany as long ago as in 1876. It is not necessary 
to suppose that the climate of the Post-Glacial Steppes of Central 
Europe was so extremely dry, and the vegetation so sterile and so 
wanting in trees, as they are now in the Mongolian Steppes of 
Central Asia; it is sufficient to suppose a climate and a flora like 
that of Hast-Russia and West-Siberia. 
8. That all deposits of Loess have been caused by subaérial 
means, I do not venture to maintain;* but at any rate, the wind has 
played an important part in the formation of the Loess-like deposits 
of Westeregeln, Thiede, and many other places in Ceutral Europe. 
9. I have never confounded the Arctic Tundras with the sub- 
Arctic grassy herbed Steppes of South-west Siberia, as Mr. Howorth 
seems to believe. Although the Tundras are often designated by 
the geographers as moss-steppes, or Arctic steppes, and although 
they are not throughout so exceedingly humid as Mr. Howorth 
maintains, I know, however, very well, that they display both a 
different fauna and different climatic conditions as compared with the 
southern grassy Steppes. During the Glacial period there were, no doubt, 
also Tundra-like districts in Germany between the extended glaciers 
and fields of inland-ice, that covered great parts of our country. 
The characteristic animals of those Tundra-like districts in Ger- 
many were the same, which at present live in the Tundras of 
Siberia, and in the Barren Grounds of North-America, viz. Myodes 
torquatus (=. hudsonius), Myodes obensis, Lepus glacialis, Vervus 
tarandus, Ovibos moschatus, Canis lagopus, Lagopus mutus, Lagopus 
albus, Strix nivea, as 1 have shown in many publications. 
10. This Arctic fauna of Central Europe, after the melting of the 
glaciers and ice-fields, was by degrees displaced and dispossessed by 
the above-mentioned sub-Arctic Steppe-fauna, and this fauna was 
afterwards displaced and pushed Eastward by the forest fauna, which 
had been reduced during the Glacial period to those parts of Europe 
where the forests had not been destroyed by the ice-streams of the 
mountains and the ice-fields of the plains. 
1 See my essay in the “‘ Gaea,’’ 1877, p. 223. 
* See my essay in the “‘ Tagliche Rundschau,”’ Berlin, 17 Mai, 1882, No. 114. 
3 See my essay in the ‘‘ Globus,”’ 1880, Bd. 37, No. 1. 
