^78 M. Bertrand de Doue's Memoir on the 



scoriae upon which this flow reposed. Gratified with a dis- 

 covery so unexpected, he set himself to work, and by the help 

 of the inhabitants of a neighbouring house succeeded in dis- 

 engaging a certain quantity of them ; but nearly all fractured 

 and more or less friable. 



" Upon his arrival at Le Puy, Dr Hibbert did me the friend- 

 ly favour of coming to see me ; he showed me these bones to 

 which, with reason, he attached much value, on account of 

 the rarity of fragments of organized bodies being contained in 

 volcanic rocks. Most of them were still adherent to their 

 gangue, but in such a state of deterioration, that it would have 

 been difiicult to determine them if we had been reduced to 

 the sole testimonies of comparative anatomy. It was only by 

 inductions drawn from the age of the ground in which they 

 were buried, that we considered them as belonging to those 

 mammalia, which had formed a part of that third succession 

 of terrestial animals, the remains of which are dispersed in the 

 ancient alluvial soils. To conclude, Dr Hibbert, with that 

 disinterestedness which characterizes the true friend of science, 

 described to me the place where he had found them, and en- 

 gaged me to visit them, by assuring me that there was still a 

 rich harvest to be hoped for. 



" M. Deribier, to whom I hastened to communicate this dis- 

 covery, thought, like me, that it was too interesting to be ne- 

 glected. Some days afterwards we both went to Saint-Privat. 

 It was not difficult to recognize the site which had been indi- 

 cated to me by Dr Hibbert : but having been more fortunate 

 than him, in an excavation which was carried as far as it was 

 possible to accomplish under the superimposed basalts, we col- 

 lected not only bones in a very great quantity, but also some 

 portions of skeletons, of teeth, and of fragments of maxillary 

 bones very well preserved. 



" But before examining to what genera of animals these cu- 

 rious remains have belonged, it would be proper that some 

 notion be conveyed of the general character of the site, as well 

 as of the nature and extent of the district in which they have 

 been found." 



[The author, in this part of his dissertation, has entered into 



