Ch. X.] LOESS OR INUNDATION MUD. H7 



both levels fluviatile and land-shells are met with in the loam as well 

 as in the gravel, bnt there are no marine shells associated, except at 

 Abbeville, in the lowest part of the gravel, near the sea, and a few 

 feet only above the present high-water mark. Here with fossil shells 

 of living species are mingled the bones of Elephas primigenius and 

 E. antiquus, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Hippopotamus, Felis spelcea, 

 Hycena spelcea, reindeer, and many others, the bones accompanying 

 the flint implements in such a manner as to show that both were 

 buried in the old alluvium at the same period. 



Nearly the entire skeleton of a rhinoceros was found at one point, 

 namely, in the Menchecourt drift at Abbeville, the bones being in 

 such juxtaposition as to show that the cartilage must have held them 

 together at the time of their inhumation. 



The general absence here and elsewhere of human bones from 

 gravel and sand in which flint tools are discovered, may in some 

 degree be due to the present limited extent of our researches. But it 

 may also be presumed that when a hunter population, always scanty 

 in numbers, ranged over this region, they were too wary to allow 

 themselves to be overtaken by the floods which swept away many 

 herbivorous animals from the low river-plains where they may have 

 been pasturing or sleeping. Beasts of prey prowling about the same 

 alluvial flats in search of food may also have been surprised more 

 readily than the human tenant of the same region, to whom the signs 

 of a coming tempest were better known. 



In the very few instances in which we have good evidence in 

 Europe of the occurrence of human remains in post-pliocene deposits, 

 exclusive of those in caves, the fossil relics have been found at or near 

 the line of junction of the superficial loam (3', 4', fig. 106) with the 

 underlying gravel. Thus M. Ami Boue, an experienced observer, 

 disinterred with his own hands, in the valley of the Rhine in 1853, 

 parts of a human skeleton from the lower portion of a deposit of loam 

 or loess 80 feet thick. This discovery was made at Lahr, a small 

 town in the Grand Duchy of Baden, nearly opposite Strasburg, on the 

 right side of the valley of the Rhine. They were shown at the time 

 to Cuvier, and recognized by him as human.* One of them, a femur, 

 first attracted notice as it projected from a perpendicular cliff of 

 loess, forming the lowest of a succession of terraces, which had been 

 excavated in the loam by the denuding power of the Schutter, a 

 small tributary which at Lahr joins the great alluvial plain of the 

 Rhine. The loam in which the bones were embedded is similar 

 in mineral character to that of the great adjoining plain, and so 

 continuous as to imply that the Rhine once flowed up into the valley 

 of its tributary, and filled it to a considerable height with its 

 muddy sediment, at the time when the skeleton was enveloped in it. 



Inundation-mud of rivers. — Brick-earth. — Fluviatile loam, or 



* Lyell, Antiquity of Man. Appendix 2d and 3d ed. 



