148 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



about fourteen feet. The beds of this series consist of loam with 

 a general loss-like character, which is most strongly pronounced 

 towards the bottom, where the colour of the deposit is bright 

 yellow. At that horizon it is strongly calcareous, has the well- 

 known tubular or capillary structure, is very fine in the grain, 

 shows little or no trace of bedding, has very little or even no 

 plasticity, and contains characteristic loss-shells, such as Pupa 

 muscorum, Succinea oblonga, Helix hispida, etc. The uppermost 

 portion, from one to nine feet down, is rendered more or less 

 dark-coloured by the presence of carbonaceous matter ; some 

 parts when wet are even quite black. About seven feet or so 

 from the surface many pieces of oak occur, but other organic 

 remains are not common. Lower down come remains of a 

 large ox, lion, etc. 



2. The Second or Middle Stage extends from the bottom of 

 the overlying beds down to twenty-two feet from the surface, 

 giving a thickness of eight feet. The beds of this stage are not 

 true loss but rather calcareous clays, containing not a few rounded 

 and angular stones, chiefly flint, but quartz, granite, and other 

 varieties also occur, some of the fragments having evidently 

 been derived from the so-called " Northern Drift," of which I 

 shall speak in a later chapter, while others may have come 

 from the Harz Mountains and districts to the south or south- 

 west. One fragment of red granite must have weighed over 

 twenty pounds. The most abundant organic remains in this 

 bed are those of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, and 

 next to these are the horse and a kind of ox. The hyaena and 

 the reindeer are rarer. 



3. The Third or Lowest Stage, consisting of alternations of 

 thin sandy and loamy layers, begins at about twenty-two feet 

 from the surface, and extends to the bed-rock of the neighbour- 

 hood at a depth of from thirty to thirty-five feet, and sometimes 

 as much as forty feet from the soil. The line of demarcation 

 between it and the clays of the overlying middle stage is clearly 

 defined. The most abundant remains in this stage are those of 

 lemmings — Myodes lemmus (common or Norwegian lemming) 



