Geest. — McGcc. 383 
equally well known in southern Europe ; "regur" is the com- 
mon name of a prevailing soil, and "laterite" the accepted 
designation for a peculiar ferruginous phase of the prevailing 
product of rock decay in peninsular India ; and the "black 
earth" of Ukraine and "chernojem" of the Ural region are 
well known ; but the group into which these phenomena fall 
is singularly nameless, alike among the students and the tillers 
of the earth. 
The product of modern river action is everywhere recog- 
nized by some form of its classic appellation, alluvium ; the 
distinctive but ever-varying deposit first studied on the banks 
of the Rhine has come to be known in all civilized lands by its 
original provincial name, loess ; ihe assemblage of glacial de- 
posit's is everywhere known by the simple Anglo-Saxon des- 
ignation, drift, — and only less widely by its British synonvm, 
till ; the foundation upon which all these categories of super- 
ficial deposits rest is universally recognized as rock, and a 
score of subordinate divisions are named by every school boy; 
yet the most extensive category of superficial deposits, of the 
phenomena lying nearest to man, is without a general name 
though many of its subdivisions are named — for here civilized 
man has imitated the savage, who names the members of a 
class but feels no need of a name for the class itself. 
It is the more singular that the widespread products of 
rock decay should remain without distinctive appellation since 
at one period in the growth of geologic science such a desig- 
nation was proposed and found its way into geologic litera- 
ture. Early in the present century J. Andre De Luc clearl\ 
discriminated, first the solid rocks of the earth and the un- 
consolidated materials by which these rocks are mantled, and 
second, (a) the immediate products of rock decay in situ and 
(b) the debris transported and redeposited by streams. For 
the former portion of the superficial mantle he adopted the 
provincial designation for "earth" in Holland and northern 
Germany ("geest"*), and for the transported materials of all 
kinds he adopted the term "alluvium. "t Soon after, De Luc's 
term came into use by geologists in this country ; and by two 
of the foremost among them, Amos Eaton and T. Romcyn 
• Abregc Geologique, Paris. 1816, p. 121. 
t Ibid., p. 112. 
