70 H. S. Howorth — A Great Post- Glacial Flood. 



it involves, no doubt, that at fhe time when the Mammoth was 

 destroyed, there was a great dislocation of the earth's crust in certain 

 neighbourhoods, and corresponding volcanic and other agitation. 

 Proofs that there were such dislocations at this very time on a very 

 wide scale will I trust be forthcoming in a future paper. At present 

 we will localize our problem to the two areas where the Loess 

 predominates, Central Europe and China. First, the European area. 

 There can be small doubt that the volcanos of the Eifel, etc., in 

 the Ehine Valley, were in full activity during and probably also 

 subsequent to the deposit of the Loess. Dr. Samuel Hibbert-Ware, 

 who, in 1832, published his well-known work entitled " History 

 of the Extinct Volcanoes of the Basin of Neuwied on the Lower 

 Khine," has ampl}^ proved this, and it is a most remarkable fact 

 how little use has been made of his careful researches by recent 

 writers on the Loess. The first point which Dr. Hibbert-Ware made 

 clear was, that the deposition of the Ehine Loess took place at 

 the time when the volcanos there were active, just as we know the 

 volcanos of Auvergne were active when the deposits containing 

 Mammoth and other remains were laid down. On pages 201 and 

 202 of his book may be seen descriptions of sections showing the 

 alternation of Loess, with beds of volcanic ashes, pumice, and white 

 sand. These sections occur near Andernach. I will content myself 

 with quoting one sentence. " From Heddesdorf to Oberbeiber 

 and between Friedrichstein, Fahr, Q-enersdorf, and Feldkirch, layers 

 of Loess, only a few inches in thickness, are not only observed to 

 alternate with white pumice, but even with black sand. Similar 

 appearances again present themselves at Bendorf, Bassenheim, 

 Octendung, and Obermennig" (op. cit. p. 202). Lyell attempts to 

 explain this somewhat overwhelming evidence in another way, but 

 even he says: "The volcanoes of the Lower Eifel seem to have 

 been in eruption in Pleistocene times," and he suggests that some 

 of them were of sufficiently modern date to belong to the era when 

 man was contemporary with the Mammoth and Ehinoceros in the 

 basin of the Meuse (Antiquity of Man, p. 77). We still have 

 exhalations of carbonic acid and calcareous springs in this district, 

 which are the dying embers of the old fires so recently in activity. 



If we go further east, we find the chief areas where the European 

 Loess is distributed, Hungary, Moravia, the Carpathians and Tran- 

 sylvania, strewn with relics of volcanic energy, basaltic, trachytic, 

 and tufaceous deposits abounding. Many of these are of late 

 geological date. Many admittedly of as late as Tertiary times. 

 I believe that the volcanic energy of this vast congeries of confused 

 mountains lasted until much later times, and we still have in Tran- 

 sylvania and Wallachia mud volcanos in activity ; while in the former 

 country the volcanos of Budos Hegy still emit large quantities of 

 gas and vapour. If we turn to the Chinese Loess, we shall find that 

 it also is focussed about, and is in immediate contact with a district 

 in which volcanic action has been active down to quite a recent 

 historical period. Mr. Pumpelly has described the border districts 

 of China and Mongolia in a well-known paper in the loth volume 



