HY ENA SPELAA. 141 
about two hundred and fifty feet into the interior of the 
hill, expanding and contracting itself irregularly from two 
to seven feet in breadth, and two to fourteen feet in height. 
“‘ Both the roof and floor, for many yards from the en- 
trance, are composed of regular horizontal strata of lime- 
stone, uninterrupted by the slightest appearance of fissure, 
fracture, or stony rubbish of any kind; but, farther in, the 
roof and sides become irregularly arched, presenting a very 
grotesque appearance, and being studded with 
rugged and 
pendent and roundish masses of chert and stalactite; the 
bottom of the cavern is visible only near the entrance, and 
its irregularities, though apparently not great, have been 
filled up throughout, to a nearly level surface, by the intro- 
duction of a bed of mud or loamy sediment. 
«There is no alternation of mud with any repeated beds 
of stalactite, but simply a partial deposit of the latter on 
the floor beneath it; and it was chiefly in the lower part 
of the earthy sediment, and in the stalagmitic matter 
beneath it, that the animal remains were found; there 
was nowhere any black earth or admixture of animal mat- 
ter, except an infinity of extremely minute particles of 
undecomposed bone. In the whole extent of the cave, 
only a very few large bones have been discovered that 
are tolerably perfect ; most of them are broken into small 
angular fragments and chips, the greater part of which 
lay separately in the mud, whilst others were wholly or 
partially invested with stalagmite ; and others, again, mixed 
with masses of still smaller fragments, and cemented by 
stalagmite, so as to form an osseous breccia. In some few 
places, where the mud was shallow and the heaps of teeth 
and bones considerable, parts of the latter were elevated 
some inches above the surface of the mud and its stalag- 
mitic crust, and the upper ends of the bones thus pro- 
