in the Cavern qf'Lunel. 243 



side of the present cavern was accidentally laid open, and con- 

 siderable excavations have since been made in it, at the expence 

 of the present government, for the purpose of extracting its 

 animal remains, which lie buried in mud and gravel, and of 

 searching for the aperture through which all these extraneous 

 substances have been introduced. These operations have ex- 

 posed a long rectilinear vault of nearly 1 00 yards in length, 

 and of from ten to twelve feet in width and height. The floor 

 is covered with a thick bed of diluvial mud and pebbles, oc- 

 casionally reaching almost to the roof, and composed at one 

 extremity chiefly of mud, whilst at the other end pebbles pre- 

 dominate. 



Some vertical fissures in another quarry of calcaire grossier 

 a few miles distant, are filled with similar materials to those 

 within the cavern, and containing occasionally a few bones, 

 sometimes cemented by calcareous infiltrations to a breccia like 

 that of Gibraltar, Cette, and Nice. These materials are simi- 

 lar in substance to, and are uninterruptedly connected with, a 

 superficial bed of diluvium that covers the surface of these 

 quarries, and are identical with the general mass of diluvial 

 detritus of the neighbourhood. Stalactite and stalagmite are 

 of rare occurrence in the cavern of Lunel ; hence neither its 

 bones nor earthy contents are cemented with a breccia., 



On examining the bones collected in the cavern by M. Mar- 

 cel de Serres and his associate M. Cristol, Dr Buckland found 

 many of them to bear the marks of gnawing by the teeth of 

 ossivorous animals ; he also discovered in the cave an extraor- 

 dinary abundance of balls of album grcBcum in a high state of 

 preservation. Both these circumstances, so important to esta- 

 blish the fact of the cave of Lunel having been inhabited, like 

 that of Kirkdale, as a den of hyenas, had been overlooked by 

 the French geologists. The more scanty occurrence of stalac- 

 tite, and the greater supply of album groecum in that cavern 

 than in those of England, are referred to one and the same 

 cause, viz. the introduction of less rain water into the cave by 

 infiltration than into that of Kirkdale ; in the latter cave a 

 large proportion of the fecal balls of the hyenas appears to 

 have been trod upon and crushed at the bottom of a wet and 

 narrow cave, whilst at Lunel they have been preserved by the 

 greater size and dryness of the chamber in which they lay. 



