M. Renoir en the Traces of Ancient Glaciers, 91 



at Grenoble, and the idea of which was suggested to us by M. 

 Le Blanc. We allude to the enclosure of fossil animals in 

 caverns, the cause of which has been so much disputed, but 

 which admits of a perfect explanation by the theory of a 

 general and permanent ice. It is obvious that animals must 

 have fled from the latter as long as they were in a condition 

 to do so, in search of places not yet covered with snow or ice, 

 and capable of affording a shelter to beings which, organ- 

 ized for a higher temperature, must have suffered greatly from 

 cold. They must, therefore, have sought for caverns, and 

 taken refuge in them in great numbers. The amount of indi- 

 viduals, accordingly, of every species whose remains are met 

 with, is so great, that in certain cases it is difficult to conceive 

 how the caverns could contain the whole nearly at the same 

 time. It has been remarked that these caverns contain the 

 remains of animals of too large a size to have entered by their 

 openings, which are generally rather narrow. These remains 

 in fact belong to those which, from being unable to find refuge 

 in such places, were the first to perish by the cold. Their 

 bodies served, for a longer or shorter period, as food for the 

 carnivora, which dragged fragments of them into the caverns. 

 Being capable of subsisting at the expense of other animals, 

 the carnivora must have survived them, but they were at last 

 reduced to the necessity of devouring each other, as is proved 

 by certain bones of carnivora bearing marks of the teeth of 

 other animals of the same tribe, which had gnawed them. 

 It would be of importance, for the complete solution of this 

 question, to endeavour to ascertain if carnivora have been 

 devoured in their caves by beings of the same species ; which 

 may be determined in caverns where the remains of only a 

 single carnivorous species have been found. 



If these animals, as has been alleged, took refuge in caverns 

 while trying to escape from a great inundation, it would not 

 be easy to explain why such of their cotemporaries as did not 

 enter the caverns have been at the same time embedded in 

 the ice. Besides, the opening of the caverns being in general 

 of little elevation compared with the summits of the moun- 

 tains, the animals, alarmed and driven from the lower to the 

 higher places by the waters, would not have entered them ; 

 they would necessarily, from the instinct of self preservation 

 alone, endeavour to ascend as high as possible. If we sup- 



