78 a. H. JSoii'orth — A Great Post- Glacial Flood. 



presence of removed masses of Loess, as well as by land and fluvia- 

 tile shells, and even by the bones of Mammalia which it seems to 

 have entangled in its course. But the uppermost bed is distinguished 

 by the usual character of Loess, which here displays itself of a 

 yellow colour, and of a very friable consistence, in which are entangled 



shells and bones of animals. It is also perfectly unstratified 



Such is the general order of subsidence which the Loess in its breaking 

 up, in its removal, and in its subsequent deposition, appears to have 

 observed " {op. cit. p. 197-8). What Dr. Hibbert-Ware says here of the 

 irregular arrangement and dislocation of the beds of Loess in several 

 cases can be confirmed from other writers. Pockets and seams of 

 sand and gravel, evidently false-bedded, occur in it, as it is attested 

 by several writers. Thus, Mr. Belt says of the Loess at Krems, " that 

 it contains patches and seams of gravel, and pebbles of quartz are 

 irregularly scattered throughout it. That it is unstratified, but 

 occasionally lines of division are seen separating portions of slightly 

 difierent colour and composition" [op. cit. p. 73). At Blosenberg 

 the same writer noticed that the Loess was divided into two beds by 

 a clear line of division, the upper one being of a lighter colour than 

 the lower {id. p. 71). 



Again, as Mr. Geikie urges, " the presence of lines of gravel and 

 sand (in the Loess), which here and there have been observed, indi- 

 cates unquestionably the action of water ; and the same may be said 

 of such alternations as those described by Dr. Nehring, which occur at 

 Thiede and Westeregeln, aad of the bedded Loess of Heiligenstadt 

 near Vienna, referred to by Dr. Jentzsch. Again, at Nussdorf and 

 Hungelbrunn, in the same region, the Loess, according to M. Fuchs, 

 contains freshwater shells in a distinct bed." 



The black earth also shows signs that it has been largely trans- 

 ported by some wide-spread wave of waters. Its occurrence on 

 plateaux and valleys alike irrespective of the drainage of the country 

 over so wide an area and so uniformly constituted ; and Murchison 

 urges in fact that it has been redistributed "by the powerful currents 

 which carried southwards so many debris of the drift of which it was 

 doubtless once the covering mantle in many places now bare of it." 



Mr. Geikie, with whose general conclusion I cannot agree, is here 

 at one with me. " The black earth," he says, " would appear never 

 to reach the great thickness attained by the Loess of the Rhine and the 

 Danube. This is what we might have expected from the configura- 

 tion and position of the regions over which it is distributed. The 

 wide open valleys and hroad plateaux looidd not permit of the same 

 heaping up and pounding bade of the flood waters as must have taTcen 

 place again and again in Central Europe. The route to the south lay 

 open, and the inundation waters would thus be drawn off more 

 rapidly than if they had been discharged in a northerly direction," 

 etc. Mr. Geikie goes on to argue that the Northern outlet was 

 blocked with ice, involving the contemporaneity of the Loess 

 deposits with glacial conditions, which seems at issue with the great 

 mass of evidence ; but the fact of the flood and its effects I cordially 

 accept. 



