338 



scattered all over the caves, sometimes loose, sometimes 

 adhering together by stalagmite, and forming beds of many 

 feet in thickness. They are of all parts of the body, and of 

 animals of all ages ; but are never rolled. With them is 

 found a quantity of black earth derived from the decay of 

 animal flesh ; and also, in the newly-discovered caverns, we 

 find descriptions of a bed of mud. The latter is probably 

 the same diluvian sediment which we find at Kirkdale. The 

 unbroken condition of the bones, and presence of black 

 animal earth, are consistent with the habit of bears, as being 

 rather addicted to vegetable than animal food, and, in this 

 case, not devouring the dead individuals of their own species. 

 In the hyaena's cave, on the other hand, where both flesh 

 and bones were devoured, we find no black earth ; but, 

 instead of it, we discover in the album grcBcwm evidence of 

 the fate that has attended the carcases and lost portions of 

 the bones whose fragments still remain. 



" Three- fourths of the total number of bones in the German 

 caves belong to two extinct species of bear, and two-thirds 

 of the remainder to the extinct hyaena of Kirkdale. There 

 are also bones of ^n animal of the cat kind (resembling 

 the jaguar, or spotted panther of South America,) and 

 of the wolf, fox, and polecat, and rarely of elephant and 

 rhinoceros.* 



" The bears and hyaena of all these caverns, as well as 

 the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, belong to the 

 same extinct species that occur also fossil in the diluvian 

 gravel ; whence it follows that the period in which they 

 inhabited these regions was that immediately preceding the 



* " M. Rosenrauller shows that the bears not only lived and 

 died, but were also born, in the same caverns in -which their bones 

 have been thus accumulated ; and the same conclusion follows from 

 the facts observed in the cave in Yorkshire." 



