Dr. Sandherger — The Upper Rhine Valley. 221 



Thames, etc., and on one as well as tlie other lies the Valley -loess, 

 the Marl-mud of the Diluvial period, with which we must close our 

 observations. 



The fertility of the Nile valley is the only thing to which we can 

 compare that of the Ehine, Main, Danube, and Ehone valleys, arising 

 as it does from a kindred source, and this fertility already claims for 

 this kind of hill country especial notice in the national economy. 

 It is also important in the highest degree to the geologist as the result 

 of the enormous successive periodical inundations of the Diluvial period. 

 One absolute fact, easily calculated, may be deduced from it, viz. 

 that in these times the Rhine at Strasburg carried 48 times as much 

 water as it now does at its highest, and this will explain the enor- 

 mous thickness of the mud. That this only relates to deposits at 

 high-water levels is shown most clearly by the shells of the Loess. 

 They are almost entirely land-shells, and are certainly such as lived 

 in the immediate vicinity of the river and its tributaries. High 

 Alpine and hj'perborean forms are found in them as well as in the 

 Mosbach sand ; but the true Alpine forms, such as Clausilia gracilis 

 and Helix pilosa, are only found in the streauis proceeding from the 

 Alps, or in their great tributaries, generally sj^reading to the north- 

 wards. But the. forms identical with those now living in the Main 

 and Ehine valleys, so largely represented in the Loess, are never 

 so common in the present high-water deposits ; for example, the 

 little amber shell, Succinea oblonga, now a rarity in the Main and 

 Ehine valley's, is quite a common shell at St. Petersburg and Stock- 

 holm. The Vertebrata (15 species) are mostly the same as those in 

 the Mosbach sand, but of Elephants we only have the Mammoth ; the 

 Bhinoceros Mercldi, with the wose-doison only half bony, is supple- 

 mented by the hairy Siberian Uh. tichorhinus, the nose-cloison of which 

 is quite bony ; the Hippopotamus is quite extinct, and Eeindeer and 

 Wapiti ( Cervus Canddensis) are much more plentiful than at Mos- 

 bach. Of beasts of prey, we have here at first the Cave-lion and the 

 Cave-hyaena, along with which, in the caves of the Lahnthal, are 

 also found the Cave-wolf and Fox. It is most remarkable that of late 

 our best osteologists have identified the Cave-hy^na with the South 

 African H. crocuta. If this be so, it would be an anomaly without 

 parallel in the history of Diluvial animals, indicating an emigration 

 of a species of the Glacial period into a tropical climate, and for this 

 reason this view must certainly be received with caution. 



With the Loess the Diluvial period closes. No deposit more recent 

 contains any complete series of extinct species ; and if a division is 

 to be made anywhere between Diluvial and Alluvial periods, it must 

 be made here. 



We know that Man must have lived at that time, and that, scantily 

 fed and roughly clothed, he waged war with the giant beasts of 

 the olden time, over whom he remained the victor through the intel- 

 lectual superiority which separates him from the nearest and most 

 highly-gifted animals. 



