450 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1895. 



later ones whose remains, including those of Man, have heen 

 found in so many caves by Mr. H. C. Mercer. The speaker had 

 suggested 1 that this interval was marked by the Champlain depres- 

 sion during which the Columbia gravels and other formations of 

 gravel and clay were deposited, and he had hence designated the 

 caves of the two ages as Prechamplain and Postchamplain. 



As regards the mode of occurrence of the remains of this fauna 

 the following remarks were made. No single cave deposit has 

 been found as yet which contains so large a number of species as 

 the subject of this communication, although those of Brixham in 

 England and Gailenreuth in Bavaria, contained as many or more 

 numerous individual animals. As the majority of the species at 

 Port Kennedy are not cave-dwellers, and many of them, as the mas- 

 todons and sloths, cannot well have been dragged there by carnivo- 

 rous species, the question arises as to how the accumulation came 

 about. The bones show no signs of gnawing, nor of wear, as though 

 they had been transported. At the same time two bones have been 

 rarely found in their normal relations in the skeleton. The fissure 

 has been exposed for some twenty feet from the summit, but the 

 bottom has not been reached, chiefly on account of the quantity of 

 water present. The scattered and mixed relations of the bones are 

 identical with the conditions he had found to exist in caves contain- 

 ing the same fauna in Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee. No 

 local conditions will therefore account for a phenomenon so wide- 

 spread. 



Without evidence of a conclusive character, the impression which 

 he had gathered from the facts is as follows: He suspected that the 

 larger animals at least fell into this fissure during a long period. 

 Many of the smaller ones may have entered it from entrances now 

 filled by debris. Animals frequently resort to caves to die. A gallery 

 of fifty feet in length which is large enough to admit a man standing 

 nearly erect, in the Marble cave in South West Missouri, was found 

 to be packed for a considerable part of its length by mummied rac- 

 coons who had apparently crawled in there. At the period of 

 submergence of the Champlain epoch, floods of water from melting 

 ice poured into the fissure, and filled it to the mouth with debris, 

 churning up the contents already there, and carrying in logs and 

 other vegetable matter. The stratification of the deposit may be 

 thus accounted for, as also the presence of worn and unworn stones. 

 In the lower part of the deposit vegetable debris and forest mold 

 predominate, which contain seeds and nuts. This deposit appar- 

 ently represents the long period during which the fissure was open. 



1 American' Naturalist, 1895, p. 59S. 



