Scientific Intelligence. — Geology. 395 



GEOLOGY. 



14. Fossil Bones in the Cave of Mitemont. — M. Brongniart, 

 in July 1828, at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, 

 gave an account of a letter which he had received from M. Jules 

 Delanoue, dated Souffignac, near Miremont, 15th July 1828. 

 The author of the letter had discovered in the Cave of Mire- 

 mont, in the Department of the Dordogne, fossil bones in gene- 

 ral resembling those which have been found In the caves of Ger- 

 many and England, and latterly in several of those of France. 

 In the description of this cave, inserted in the Annales des 

 Mines (t. vii. p. 597, 1822), it was remarked that no fossil bone 

 had been discovered in it ; but at that period Mr Buck land had 

 not published his inquiries respecting the position which these 

 organic remains commonly have in all the caves in which they 

 have been successively discovered. M. Delanoue gives the fol- 

 lowing statements with respect to this new example of the sur- 

 prising constancy of this geological phenomenon : — The cave, 

 which is very large, is formed in a deposit which appears to be- 

 long to the chalk, or to the formations intermediate between the 

 chalk and the jura limestone. It is of much greater dimensions 

 than the plan inserted in the Annales des Mines indicates. The 

 galleries are so much the narrower the more they are branched, 

 and are prolonged without any very remarkable contraction or 

 dilatation, for 2000 yards or more. All the galleries end in a 

 multitude of narrow and low ramifications, which may be com- 

 pared to the springs and brooks that feed a river. It was in 

 these parts that M. Delanoue found most of the bones. The 

 floor is of red tenacious clay, containing fragments of flint and 

 shells. Bones are not found either in the white mud, or in the 

 earth, resulting from the crumbling of the walls, but in the red 

 clay alone. The bones occur at all depths, as well as at the sur- 

 face. In the latter case they are friable and broken. They^ife 

 chiefly teeth and bones, which M. Delanoue supposes to belong 

 to the Ursus bombifrons, whose fossil remains are found at Iser- 

 lohn, and in other caves in Germany, M. Delanoue observes 

 that the Miremont cave presents no stalactites. This circum- 

 stance, which had been already pointed out, is rather rare in 



