OF WESTERN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN COASTS. 
905 
shall, therefore, give only such particulars as are needed for the discussion of their 
views, and for the purpose of generalizing the phenomena they describe,* 
Though this rubble-ch’ift in some of its phases sometimes simulates the characters 
of the other drift deposits, I found it impossible to reduce it to the terms of any of 
those others. Whereas these latter are spread out in beds more or less horizontal, 
and keep to definite lines, this drift drapes the hills, follows divergent directions, 
and ends only when it reaches the floor of the valleys. The faunal debris of this drift 
also differs essentially in its main characteristics from that of the other drift deposits. 
There is an entire absence both of marine and fluviatile shells ; the remains found in 
it are those of land animals and land shells alone, with traces of land plants, such 
remains in fact as could have been derived from a land surface, and from a land 
surface only. Owing to their extreme friability, the shells are of rare occurrence, and 
the most common one, the Pupa marginata, is so minute, that it often escapes obser¬ 
vation. Another feature to be noted, is that the bones of the Mammalia (which 
belong to the ordinary Quaternary group), are distinguished by their very fragmen¬ 
tary state and by the absence of roear, whether of the broken fragments or of the 
* [The notices of the several detrital beds I have included under the term of “ Rnbble-drift ” have, 
with the exception of the Loess, generally been incidental and limited to some one phase. With respect 
to that form of it represented by the Ossiferous fissures, an impression would appear to have prevailed 
that the subject was exhausted by the early reseai’ches of Cuvier and Marcel de Seeres, for though so 
much has been done of late years in explanation of the contents of the remarkable Prehistoric Caves in 
France and elsewhere on the continent, there have been no detailed descriptions of those Ossiferous fissures, 
with the exception of those of Gibraltar (1878), and slight notices of those of Nice (1887), since that of 
De la Beche in 1828 ; nor, with the exception of the short notice by M. Lanza in 1855, has anything been 
added to our knowledge of tlie numerous Dalmatian fissures since the Abbe Fortis wrote in 1778. In 
Italy, the latest contribution I can find is the one by Professor Capellini in 1879. The recent paper’s 
of Stefani in the ‘Annales de la Soc. Geol. de Belgique’ (1891), on the Upper Tertiary and PosU 
Pliocene beds of the Mediterranean Basin barely touch on any of those which form the subject of this 
inquiry. 
It is the same with the rubble-drift on slopes. Besides the instances I have given in France 
(1860-71), and at Gibraltar (1878), and of the Argile a hlocaux in Belgium (1872), I am not aivare of 
any more recent memoirs on this particular subject. The later more general works on the geology 
of the South of Europe and the North of Africa, have added nothing to the facts described by the 
earlier writers I have referred to. 
The contemporaneous deposit of Loess forms an exception to this neglect. The recent literature on 
this subject is copious and varied, but it is mainly confined to that section of the Loess which has a 
fluviatile origin, and is not applicable to that other section which extends beyond the reach of river- 
floods and to the greater heights of Central Europe. It is to the latter alone that my observatiorrs are 
at present confined, and they only relate to a few points.^ 
I should add that I have been obliged, for various I’easons, to confine myself in each section to a 
limited number of the more typical instances. I have not, however, I believe, omitted any cases but 
such as would confirm the evidence of those which I have adduced.—J. P., June, 1893.] 
I have discussed the subject of the fluviatile Loess in a paper which appeared in the ‘ Phil. Trans.’ 
for 1864, p. 247. 
ilDCCCXCIII.—A. 5 z 
