75 
1877J The Loess of the Rhine and the Danube. 
in Galicia. I was greatly gratified by finding loess shells in 
abundance, and thus adding another link to the chain of 
evidence that connects the loess with the northern drift. 
This northern drift and the clay that accompanies it is the 
Upper Boulder clay of the east of England; and in 1864 
Mr. Searles-Wood, jun., was led — simply from the descrip- 
tion of the loess of Belgium — to suggest the identity of the 
latter with the Upper Glacial clay.* 
Prof. Suess has found, in the basin of the Danube, some 
important evidence pointing to the Glacial age of the loess. 
He showed me pieces of green Hornblendic rock that had 
been broken from large erratic blocks found in the loess near 
Vienna. This rock is not known to occur in place nearer 
than the Wechsel, at the Styrian frontier, and he thinks it 
must have been carried on and dropped from ice floating 
over the water from which the loess was deposited. At 
Wurflach there is the terminal moraine of a glacier that 
once came down from the Schneberg. This moraine con- 
tains many scratched and polished blocks of limestone. 
Many of these have been carried across the Steinfeldt and 
deposited on the flanks of the range of hills near Pitten, 
where the local rocks are mica-schists. They lie at a height 
of about 1100 feet from the sea, and at a distance of 9 miles 
from the terminal moraine at Wurflach, which is the nearest 
point from which they can have been brought. They were 
noticed by M. Morlot, who did not know, however, from 
whence they had been derived. Prof. Suess traced them to 
their source, and thinks they must have been carried by 
floating ice. 
The animal remains found in and below the loess also in- 
dicate its Glacial age. I have spoken of the gravels that 
underlie it and belong to an earlier period, in the basin of the 
Rhine. Some of these gravels appear to be of the same 
age as the Cromer Forest beds and the Durnten lignites, 
being characterised by the presence of Rhinoceros etruscus, 
Pale., which has been identified by M. Lartet with the 
R. Merkii of the German and Swiss geologists. The depo- 
sits containing this characteristic mammal are well developed 
at Mosbach, near Biebrich, in the valley of the Main ; they 
consist of sands and gravels overlaid by the loess. Besides the 
Rhinoceros etruscus they contain bones of Elephas antiquus , E. 
primi genius, Cervus tarandus, C. megaceros, and Hippopotamus 
major — a curious mixture of northern species with those that 
are supposed to have had a more southern range. Probably 
* Ann. of Nat. Hist., vol. xiii., p. 185. 
