OF WESTERN" EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN COASTS. 
925 
the areas most free from the scour of the varying currents and retreating waters, or 
in the more sheltered places. 
The cause here assigned for the origin of this section of the Loess accords with 
that to which I have attributed other phenomena of a different class on heights 
in France and elsewhere, and with the facts we have noted in the Channel 
Islands. Like also these other divisions of the Kubble-drift this Loess contains only 
the debris of a land surface, consisting of land shells and the remains of the later 
Quaternary Mammalia, together with which there have been occasionally found a few 
fragments of the human skeleton. 
Ruhhle-drift on Slopes. 
The North of France and Belgium. — I have before referred to some of the more 
striking sections of this drift on the coast-line in the North of France, We may 
notice a few of the inland exposures and also one that occurs in a conterminous 
district of Belgium, The character and position of some of the Quaternary beds 
in the province of Namur, described by M. Dupont, agree exactly with those of 
the Bubble-drift in the South of England. His “ Argile d hlocaux ” and “ Limon 
homogene” are counterparts of our angular di’ift and brick-earth, and, as with us, 
they vary accordingly as they are spread out in valleys and j^lains, or are massed 
on the slopes of the hills."^ The following section (fig. 11) gives the succession in 
the valleys. 
Fig. 11. 
1. Loam, not stratified. 3. Loam, stratified, fluviatile. 
2. The same with angular rock-fragments. 4. Bed of rolled pebbles, fluviatile. 
M, Dupont says of the bed No. 2, which constitutes his “ Argile d hlocaux,” 
that it has deeply eroded the underlying beds, and when it has caught up pebbles 
from those beds, a great number are broken, and the fractured edges remain sharp. 
When overlying hard rocks these are unaffected by it. There is an absence of 
stratification, though in places there is a sort of rude {torrentielle) bedding. The 
angular fragments (sometimes including blocks of large size) are all of local 
origin, and there are none transported from a distance. The loamy matrix varies 
in colour and substance according to the nature of the local rocks from the 
surface of which it is derived. The loam No. 1 forms a brick-earth, and is 
* ‘Bull. Soc. Geol. France,’ 2nd Ser., vol. 24, p. 77, 1866; and ‘Bull, de I’Acad. Roy. de Belgique, 
2nd Ser., vol. 21, No. 6. 
