220 Notices of Memoirs — 



pebble-beds, interstratified witb sand, tbe smaller bones and borns 

 and the larger river-sbells ; and in the sand is a rich collection of 

 land and freshwater shells. The Mosbach Fauna has already been 

 made the subject of a learned paper by A. Braun and Herman von 

 Meyer, and since then the interest felt in the German Diluvial forma- 

 tion has greatly increased. At present I can name 73 species of 

 shells, and 24 Vertebrata, but I must be brief about them. 



The greater part of the MoUusca are still living in the Main valley, 

 more particularly in the upper part near and above Bamberg; others — 

 viz. Valvata naticina, Macrostonia, and Hyalina viridula — are only 

 found in the north-east and the north of Europe ; Ftipa columella 

 still lives near St. Petersburg, in Lapland, and on the Gemmi ; 

 Patula solaria in the eastern Alps and the Silesian hills ; others 

 attain their southern limit at Frankfort. On the whole it is manifest 

 that a much colder climate than that of the Mainzthal at the present 

 day must have obtained at the time of the deposition of the Mosbach 

 sands. The great difference visible between early times and now is 

 presented yet more forcibly by the Vertebrata than by the shells. 

 There we find, along with the Horse, Eoe and Ked Deer, Wild Boar, 

 Badger, and Water-rat, still living in the neighbourhood, and the 

 Beaver, the last specimen of which was killed near Mainz in the 

 beginning of this century; the Elk and Auroch or Urns, which since 

 the middle ages has been driven back to the marshy woods of 

 northern Europe, Reindeer, now only living in Polar regions. Mar- 

 mots, natives of the High Alps, all bearing witness to the Ice 

 period. The gigantic Cave-bear, the Giant Stag {Cerviis megaceros), 

 possibly the mighty Schelch of the Nibelungen, were still among 

 the beasts hunted during the oldest " Stone period," Elephant, 

 Rhinoceros, and River-horse, all strange to the Europe of to-day. 

 Elephants are represented by two species, one, the lesser, akin to the 

 African S. antiqims (Falconer), and the larger one resembling the 

 Asiatic, tho Mammoth. The finding of the Mammoth, and also of 

 the Rhinoceros of the Loess, in perpetual ice in Siberia, covered 

 with hair that adequately protected them from the northern winter, 

 shows that they were not southern forms accidentally mixed with 

 those belonging to the Arctic climate. The Hippopotamus only can 

 be pressed into this view of the subject, inasmuch as Mosbach is its 

 northern limit. But as this solitary animal might also have had a 

 hairy covering, it is impossible to adduce it as any tenable ground 

 for a contrary decision. 



The association of Cave-bear, Mammoth, Reindeer, and Auroch all 

 in one deposit at Mosbach, completely confutes the classification, by 

 Lartet and Dupont, of the prehistoric times of the French and 

 Belgian caves, into the Cave-bear, Mammoth, and Reindeer periods, 

 and so forth — ^a theory which could not be established in the neigh- 

 bouring Lahnthal, and which Boj'd Dawkins has rightly abandoned 

 for England. No trace of Man, not the simplest, rudest, splintered 

 stone, has yet been found in the Mosbach sand ; and yet the conditions 

 of the deposit prove to demonstration that these are precisely of the 

 same age as the flint-flake beds in the valleys of the Somme and the 



