66 EXTIxNCT FAUNA OF BRAZIL. 



to forty feet in height. Its floor, for a distance of twenty feet 

 from the entrance, was covered with a bed of earth, perfectly 

 identical with the soil outside, and which had evidently been 

 washed in by rain water. Farther in, this bed of earth dis- 

 appeai-ed, and was replaced by a layer of very loose brownish 

 or black mould, about a foot thick, and completely full of 

 small bones, more abundant in some places than in others. — 

 I filled a box, containing about half a cubic foot, with this 

 mould ; and on my return home counted in it about 2,000 

 separate rami of the under jaw of Mus lasiurus, and about 

 400 of Videlphis murinus^ besides a small number of the 

 jaws of other animals, of which I shall presently speak more 

 particularly. These bones were for the most part broken : 

 only the smaller, such as those of the feet, the vertehrce, and 

 the strongest long bones, being entire. All the skulls, with- 

 out exception, were fractured, so that a portion of each, par- 

 ticularly the ossa inter par iet alia, was usually wanting : the 

 weaker ascending ramus of the under jaw was also generally 

 absent. The bones were in different states of preservation, 

 according to the position occupied by them in the bed of 

 earth ; those lying deepest being brown, brittle, and adhesive 

 to the tongue, properties which diminished upwards, so that 

 the uppermost of all were very fresh. Upon the surface of 

 the earth lay scattered the elytra and legs of beetles. 



The extraordinary collection of bones at this place, and 

 their fractured condition, led me involuntarily to the conclu- 

 sion, that they must have been introduced by some predatory 

 animal ; and subsequent examination has taught me to recog- 

 nize this animal in the common Brazilian owl, Strix perlata. 

 This owl is met with in abundance in the caverns, where also 

 I have had frequent .opportunities of examining its nest, 

 under which I have invariably found a heap of ball-shaped 

 bodies, from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. — 

 These balls consist of tangled hair, intermixed with the above- 

 mentioned bones ; and are the well-known balls cast up by 

 all predatory birds after digesting the flesh of their prey. — 

 They fall asunder in the course of time, when the less dura- 

 ble portions, such as the hair &c., moulder away, and form 

 the loose soil before spoken of, in which the bones lie scat- 

 tered about. I have had frequent opportunities of tracing 

 the formation of these heaps from their first commencement : 

 but to remove all possibility of doubt, I kept several species 

 of owls in my own house, and supplied them with small mam- 

 mals and birds; and under my own eye they cast up the very 

 same sort of balls filled with bones, which exhibited exactly 

 the same marks of injury as those in the caves. 



