304 Trof. Baron F. Richthofen — On the Origin of the Loess. 



to him by name only, but never by the arguments on whicb it rests, 

 Mr. Howorth proceeds to expose his own hypothesis. Like that of 

 his predecessor Dr. Hibbert Ware, of 1832,' it is boldly founded on 

 the supposition of cataclysmic events of tremendous magnitude. 

 But while Dr. Hibbert, who had with regard to th& occurrence of 

 the Loess the limited knowledge of his time, was satisfied with one 

 event, namely a great flood, Mr. Howorth, to whom the whole 

 amount of the present knowledge of the subject was accessible, pre- 

 supposes two stages. The first was marked by a vast volcanic out- 

 pouring of "subterranean mud," while in the second this mud was 

 "largely steeped in floods of water," and "mixed with the ingre- 

 dients of the superficial bed over which it poured." The mud was 

 thereby spread over large extents of country, mammals and shells 

 were imbedded in it, and the entire mass was deposited without 

 stratification, although the flood must have reached up to at least 

 5000 feet in Central Europe, and to 8000 feet in China, overwhelm- 

 ing, as must be supposed, almost the whole extent of two continents. 

 A similar event should have drowned simultaneously the two 

 American continents and annihilated almost all beings living above 

 the level of the sea. Granted, however, the flood, it is by no 

 means easy to understand its character, as its author is opposed 

 to the aqueous origin of the Loess, whether it be marine, or 

 lacustrine, or fluviatile. It might be supposed that the flood consisted 

 altogether of erupted mud, but we are not told why it did not leave 

 a homogeneous sheet spread over the entire continent up to a few 

 thousand feet, nor how it happened that the deposits we do find from 

 this supposed flood occur in those regions only where the conditions 

 of a continental climate have prevailed and do, in the greatest part, 

 prevail to this day ; nor do we learn the reasons why the Loess 

 differs completely in composition and structure from all known kinds 

 of volcanic mud ancient or modern, or how it is that the supposed 

 fissures from which the enormous masses of muddy volcanic rock 

 poured forth were rent at very great distance from the regions of the 

 main distribution of the Loess, and at a time when volcanic energy, 

 which had been most violent in the Tertiary age, was (at least in the 

 regions in question) in its very last and dying stage. 



I do not believe that any geologist will seriously take the trouble 

 to argue against these fanciful views. It is strange that the same 

 deposit which bears testimony in itself of having been formed in 

 the slowest, the most quiet and undisturbed manner that can be 

 imagined, should be considered the product of events grander and 

 more violent in character than any heretofore devised in the long 

 history of unfounded geological speculation. Whoever undertakes 

 to advance a theory on a geological subject, should first observe, and 

 observe again, and then compai'e his own results with what has been 

 observed, by others in other parts of the world. If the author of 

 the volcanic theory of the Loess had devoted the same admirable 

 industrj?^, with which he has studied and written the history of the 

 Mongols,' to the personal observation of the soil on which the 

 1 This theory was noticed iu China, vol. i. p. 162, 



