Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 1.djvu/328

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312
A TREATISE ON GEOLOGY.
CHAP VI.

the shore, and subsequently the whole coast raised. (Pratt and Christie, in Geol. Proceedings.)

2. Into other caves it may be thought other tribes of animals, especially predacious races, might retire to die in quiet. This is the supposition of De Luc, Cuvier, and Buckland, with respect to certain German caves filled to admiration by an enormous mass of bones and decomposed animal matter of extinct species of bears; and the habits of that tribe of quadrupeds, and the circumstances of the caverns, seem to justify this hypothesis, which is also adopted by Blumenbach. In particular, it appears that Rosenmuller has found "bones of a bear so small that it must have died immediately after its birth, and other bones of individuals that must have died in early life." Caves thus characterised are situated in the transition limestone of the Harz and Baüman's Höhle; in magnesian limestone near the Harz (Scharzfeld); in the Carpathians; abundantly in the Jurakalk of Franconia, near the sources of the Mayne (Gailenreuth, Mockas, Zahnloch, Rewig, Rabenstein, Schneiderloch, Kühloch); on the south-western border of the Thuringerwald (Glüchsbrunn, Leibenstein); Westphalia (Kluterhöhle, Sundwick). M. Cuvier states, that the bones in these caverns belong to the same species of animals, over an extent of 200 leagues: that three fourths of the whole belong to two species of bear, both extinct (ursus spelæus, U. arctoideus); two thirds of the remainder to extinct hyænas; a few to a large felis, a glutton, wolf, fox, and polecat.

In all the caverns, M. Rosenmuller found the bones disposed nearly after the same manner; sometimes scattered separately, sometimes accumulated in beds and heaps of many feet in thickness; they occur from the entrance to the deepest recesses; never in entire skeletons, but single bones mixed confusedly from all parts of the animals, and animals of all ages. The crania are generally in the lowest parts of the ossiferous mass, the longer and lighter bones above, the lower jaws always detached from the skull. They are often buried in a