12 H. S. Soworth — A Great Post- Glacial Flood. 



Goino; east, Loess abounds in tlie valley of the Upper Elbe, from 

 below Meissen to Perna, and especially in Bohemia ; in the valleys 

 of the Weser, Mulde and Saale, and in the Hartz Mountains. In the 

 valleys of the Upper Oder and the Vistula it occurs at an elevation 

 of 400 metres. It stretches from Upper Silesia right away into the 

 great Polish plain, and is found of a thickness of thirty metres at 

 Sandomir (Credner, pp. 669 and 670). It abounds in Hungary and 

 Moravia, in Gallicia, the Bukovina and Transylvania, going far 

 up into the Carpathians. It also abounds in Koumania, but has not 

 been observed south of the Balkans (Geikie, Prehistoric Europe, 

 p. 146). It is not found in Kussia, nor yet in the flat country bordering 

 the Baltic and the North Sea, Hanover, Prussia Proper, and Northern 

 Poland, which are strewn with Drift, but dies out in all directions 

 as we leave the masses of mountains in Central Europe, where it has 

 its focus. This distribution of the European Loess, as will be seen 

 presently, is an important factor in the problem of its origin. 



Let us now turn to the Chinese Loess. Eichthofen found it at 

 Chin-kiang and Nan-king, on the Yang-tsze-kiang and throughout 

 almost the entire area of the great governments of Honan and Shansi. 

 Mr. Kingsmill says it extends from the south of the Yang-tsze, in 

 the Prefecture of Chin-kiang, far into Mongolia on the north, and from 

 Anhwei on the east to an unknown distance west, in all probability 

 far into Central Asia (Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxvii. pp. 376 and 381 and 

 382). Pere David also speaks of it as specially abounding in the south 

 of Mongolia, in the country of the Tumeds and the Urats. It is a 

 remarkable fact that, as in Europe the central masses of mountains 

 are the focus of distribution of the Loess, so in the furthest east the 

 chain of mountains in Southern Mongolia is also the focus of the 

 deposit, which thins away thence as we advance towards the south, 

 disappearing a little beyond the Yang-tsze-kiang, and disappearing also 

 as we travel northwards towards Siberia. This mode of distribution, 

 as we have said, and shall show presently, is of very great import- 

 ance in the solution of the difficulties that surround the Loess. 



Let us now glance at the various theories which have been 

 proposed to meet these difficulties. The earliest theorj-, which was 

 lirst propounded by Bennigsen Forder, was that the deposit is of 

 marine origin. This view is I fancy now limited to Mr. Kingsmill, 

 and was entirely repudiated by every speaker when Mr. Kingsmill's 

 paper was read at the Geological Society. The objections to it are 

 overwhelming. In the first place a mineral deposit formed of inor- 

 ganic particles so heavily charged with a material like carbonate of 

 lime could hardly be deposited from sea- water. In the next place the 

 Loess, although abounding in organic remains, has in no single 

 instance yielded a trace of a marine organism ; this objection alone 

 is paramount. Thirdly, the Loess is practically homogeneous and 

 unstratified. It is true that concretions occur in it, as they have 

 accumulated in situ, from the deposit of carbonate of lime about 

 nuclei ; but these have been formed in this way in situ, and 

 are not evidence of stratification at all. Such a thing as an 

 unstratified marine deposit 1000 feet thick, quite homogeneous 



