206 HH. H. Howorth—The Fauna and Flora of the Loess. 
Tll.—Tur Fauna anp Fora or tar Evuropran Loss, BEING A 
Repty to Prorressorn Dr. NEHRING. 
By Henry H. Howorrn, F.S.A. 
T is not every controversialist who has the good fortune to per- 
suade two such distinguished warriors as Baron Richthofen and 
Dr. Nehring to buckle on their armour and do battle with him; and 
if there were room for vanity in the shifting panorama of Science, I 
might at least claim to have stated my case with sufficient point and 
clearness to make it necessary for more than one elaborate reply. 
There is no room for vanity however. It matters not who wins, sO 
far as I am concerned, if we only get our difficult problem more 
sifted and get closer to the truth. If there be no room for vanity, 
there is less for irony; and I am not surprised that Dr. Nehring 
should feel hurt if he thinks I have openly or covertly had the in- 
decency to sneer at himself or his work. In referring to Cuvier, it 
was not to minimize what Dr. Nehring has done, but to do justice to 
an old philosopher, whose memory I reverence, and whose claims 
had been overlooked by Baron Richthofen. It was he, I must 
emphatically repeat, if it needs repetition before such an audience 
as that reached by the Gronoercat Magazine, who first proved the 
fauna of the European Loess and its correlated deposits in its broad 
features to be identical with that found under the Siberian tundras. 
Cuvier was followed by a great crowd of diligent and close students 
of this subject, especially in France and America, without naming 
England. 
It would be impertinent in me to praise what I value so highly 
as Dr. Nehring’s researches among the Rodents and other associated 
animals he has so diligently studied in Central Germany, but he 
must not expect (in these latitudes at all events) that we can so 
magnify these researches as to forget the vast work done elsewhere, 
when the subject was virtually neglected and overlooked in Germany. 
The best of us can only turn over two or three leaves of the big 
book, and it is sheer delusion to suppose that we can appropriate 
it all or even a whole chapter. Dr. Nehring has well thumbed 
more than one leaf, and has earned the gratitude of us all. May he 
live for ever! Enough of the personal issue. Let us now turn to 
one of greater importance. 
Dr. Nehring complains that I have not quoted his work. One good 
reason is that, valuable in every way as it is, it does not. immediately 
illustrate the subject I am about, namely, the distribution of the 
Post-Glacial surface deposits and its causes. The only person who 
has reason to quarrel with a large portion of Dr. Nehring’s paper, 
notwithstanding its apparently polemical aim against myself, is 
Baron Richthofen ; for in so far as his theory is affected by zoological 
evidence, it seems to me to furnish a complete, if not disastrous 
refutation of it. Balak, the king of Moab, was not more dubiously 
supported in effect by the son of Beor than my most distinguished 
correspondent Baron Richthofen has been by Dr. Nehring. First 
let me quote one or two details, and then turn to the main issue. 
