^4 M. Bcrtrand de Deuel's Memoir on the 



this place has been a haunt of hyenas, and that the bones which 

 are thus accumulated are the remains of such as they had 

 gnawed. 



*' The nature of the superimposed materials again instructs us, 

 Jn a manner no less satisfactorily, how these animals have been 

 buried ; for it is evident, that it was by an eruption posterior to 

 that from which the lavas and scoriae underneath have proceed- 

 ed. But this event is local and accidental, being in connection 

 with causes the action of which is only manifested at intervals, 

 and upon spaces more or less circumscribed. We ought, above 

 all, to consider it as quite independent of the great revolution 

 by which is explained the destruction of this numerous popula- 

 tion belonging to ancient alluvial lands, of which the species 

 found at Saint-Privat are incontestibly a part. 



" It is very likely, on the other hand, that at the time of the 

 eruptions which covered these remains with cinders and with 

 lavas, the carnivorous animals, to whom the accumulation of 

 the bones was due, were not destroyed ; but that, flying at the 

 approach of the fiery currents, they went in quest of some new 

 retreats in places more or less contiguous. 



" Thus, the age of the most modern of our volcanoes is ne- 

 cessarily confounded with that in which these races of animals 

 lived ; and since among their spoils, scattered on the surface 

 qf the globe, there has not hitherto been found those of our 

 own species, we may consider ourselves authorized in conclud- 

 ing, that consecutive generations of them were the only wit- 

 nesses of the last conflagrations of the Velay. 



" Nevertheless, the absence of all ancient alluvium above the 

 last flows and the scorified matters which accompany them, does 

 not authorize us to infer, that the general disappearance of 

 these animals has even an approximative coincidence with the 

 epoch in which our volcanoes ceased to be in action. Yellow- 

 ish ferruginous sands, muddy or micaceous clays, or beds of 

 rolled stones, separate, it is true, in the basin of Le Puy, su- 

 perior tertiary or sedimentary deposits from the basalts. These 

 substances even exhibit several renewed alternations with flows 

 of lava, and with more or less thick beds of volcanic brec- 

 cias (breccioles volcaniques, Brong.) ; but they are always 

 covered over by one or more flows, or at least are to be detect- 



