E. E. Rou'orth — A Great Post- Glacial Flood. 11 



mechanical destruction, such as is caused by cart-wheels on a road, 

 it is converted into true loam. When in its original state, it has a 

 certain solidity, and is very porous, and perforated throughout its mass 

 by thin tubes which ramify like the roots of grass, and have evidently 

 their origin in the former existence of roots. They are incrusted 

 with a film of carbonate of lime. Water, which forms pools on 

 loam, enters therefore into Loess as into a sponge, and percolates it 

 without in the least converting it into a pulp or mud. ... It is not 

 stratified, but has a strong tendency to cleave along vertical planes ; 

 therefore, wherever a river cuts into it, the Loess abuts against it, 

 or against its alluvial bottom land in vertical cliffs, which are in 

 places 500 feet high : above, the slopes recede gradually in a series of 

 terraces with perpendicular front faces" (Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxvii. 

 p. 877). The exact parallel of the Chinese and European Loess is 

 carried out in their contents; in the shells and debris of animal 

 life which they contain. The Pere David, whom I shall again have 

 occasion to quote, tells us he found the Loess of the Yellow Eiver 

 characterized by the shells of Helices such as still live in China, 

 while in the Loess of Mongolia he found broken bones of Elephas 

 primigenius, Ehinoceros tichorhiniis, several unknown kinds of 

 Cervus, of Horses, Oxen, etc., but adds that when he wrote neither 

 he nor Eichthofen had seen traces of Palaeolithic man (Journal 

 de mon Troisieme Voyage, etc., vol. i. p. 93). Pumpelly also 

 tells us that the Chinese in digging the caves in the Loess, in 

 which so many of them live, find the bones of Cervus, etc. The 

 parallel with the European Loess is also carried out in the con- 

 cretions of carbonate of lime. Of this latter in the Loess of China Mr. 

 Kingsmill says " they have segregated from the mass in nodules of 

 fantastic shapes, which show from the vertical position of their 

 major axis their subsequent origin." In every respect, therefore, 

 the Loess of China and of Europe resemble one another except 

 in the enormous development of the formation in the former area 

 compared with the latter, and there can only be one conclusion from 

 a dispassionate survey that it was deposited under the same conditions 

 in both areas. 



We will now consider the limits of the Loess properly so-called. 

 It is found largely developed in the main valleys of the Ehine 

 and the Danube and in those of their tributaries, and in notably 

 thick deposits in the valleys of the Neckar, the Main, and the 

 Lahn. Lyell tells us the northern limit of the Loess "has been 

 marked out about the 51st parallel of latitude by MM. Omalius, 

 d'Halloy, Dumont, and others, as running east and west by Cologne, 

 Juliers, Louvain, Oudenarde. and Courtray in Belguim, to Cassel, 

 near Dunkirk, in France. South of this line, according to M. d' Archaic, 

 it envelopes Hainault, Brabant, and Lemburg, like a mantle every- 

 where uniform and homogeneous in character, filling up the lower 

 depressions of the Ardennes, and passing thence into the North of 

 France. . . . But as we go southwards and eastwards of the basin 

 of the Seine, it diminishes in quantity, and finally thins out in those 

 directions " (Lyell, Antiquity of Man, pp. 376, 377). 



