PLEISTOCENE LOAMY DEPOSITS. 147 



by which they indicate merely a difference of level and not of 

 composition. All those tracts of loss which occur within the 

 valleys proper come under the designation of valley-loss, while 

 the term " hill-loss " is applied to those masses which are less 

 closely connected with the valleys, and sometimes extend over 

 plateaux and hilly ground between separate drainage -areas. 

 As already pointed out, loss attains its greatest thickness in the 

 valleys ; as we leave these and follow it up the slopes it becomes 

 thinner, until it more or less suddenly disappears. Upon the 

 higher slopes and plateaux it rarely exceeds a few feet in 

 thickness. 



A list of loss-shells has been already given (see p. 60), 

 and it may be taken as eminently characteristic. It will be 

 remembered that the shells imply colder and wetter conditions 

 of climate than now obtain in Middle Europe. Amongst the 

 mammalian remains which have been recorded from the loss 

 are reindeer, glutton, lemming, various species of rat and mouse, 

 jerboa, marmot, pouched marmot, horse, hyama, cave-bear, urus, 

 bison, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, etc. As a rule these 

 species are represented by only detached bones, tusks, horns, 

 etc. Perfect, or nearly perfect, skeletons of the larger animals 

 seem rarely or never to occur. But now and again some of 

 the smaller species have been met with in a tolerably perfect 

 condition. Among the most interesting discoveries of the kind 

 are those recorded by Dr. JSTehring from Thiede and Westeregeln. 1 

 Thiede lies a little to the north-west of Wolfenbuttel in Bruns- 

 wick, and Westeregeln about midway between Magdeburg and 

 Halberstadt in Saxony. As the fauna obtained from those two 

 localities may be considered typical of the loss, I shall give a 

 brief digest of the facts which Dr. Nehring has made known. 

 The deposits at Thiede show three stages, which in descending 

 order are as follow : — 



1. Uppermost Stage, extending from the surface down to 



1 ' ' Die quaternaren Faunen von Thieden und Westeregeln, nebst Spuren des 

 vorgeschichtlichen Menschen," Archiv fur Anthropologic, Bd. x. and xi., 1878 

 Verh. der k.-k. geol. Reich., 1878, p. 261. 



