of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. 311 



moveable when the waves accumulate them on the beach, gradu- 

 ally harden to such a degree as to serve for millstones. 



To this soft bed, our author supposes the congregated masses of 

 bodies of animals of all races and climates, confusedly crowded 

 in close contact, to have been transported from the southward in 

 a northerly direction, by the reflux current of the departing ocean, 

 (as stated at length in the Comparative Estimate,) and to have 

 been simidtaneously deposited on, and finally immersed, by the 

 turbulant vortices of the diminishing waters, in those parts of the 

 then sea bed, which are now become Germany and England ; " like 

 the bodies of elephants and other animals, whose remains are 

 found separately and singly plunged into beds of clay. Let us 

 therefore endeavour to trace the probable and natural consequences 

 of that vast and amazing operation, and let us observe to what 

 correspondence with the phenomena of the caves in question they will 

 conduct us." 



Imprimis, the frame-work of the different animals would be shat- 

 tered by the concussion they must have experienced during the 

 transport, and at the moment of their immersion in the calcareous 

 bed ; and their skeletons, thus dislocated and fractured within their 

 integuments, would be prepared to separate their parts, when the 

 flesh and skins had decayed. 



On the final departure of the sea, the soft mass would remain in 

 its actual position, together with the substances it enclosed, and at 

 length become indurated secondary rock, and it would be strati- 

 fied, in consequence of the successive cumulations, at different in- 

 tervals, of the plastic matter from which it was derived, and the 

 strata would form regular horizontal planes, because they were de- 

 posited from suspension in a fluid. 



As the mass dried, the foreign matter enclosed in it would be 

 more or less detached from its substance, and left in a nidus or 

 cavity, the size of which would depend partly on the original quan- 

 tity and bulk of the foreign matter, partly on the degree of resist- 

 ance it was capable of opposing to the contracting mass, partly on 

 the expansive force of the gases arising from its putrefactive fer- 

 mentation, and partly on the degree of compression to which, from 

 various causes, it had been subjected ; and from the last cause, 

 always considerable, the already dislocated and fractured bones, 

 must probably have been still more crushed and splintered, and 

 the whole reduced within a much smaller space than it at first oc- 

 cupied. The fluid discharged by the drying and hardening rock", 

 percolating through the limestone, would form stalactites, depend- 

 ing from the roof ; the more copious droppings would keep the 

 slime or mud which entered with the carcasses, for a long time in a 

 liquid state, and that portion which drained down the sides and 

 (lowed to the bottom of the cavity, would form a solid floor of cal- 

 careous stalagmite, beneath the mud ; whilst what fell directly 



