Bones in Caves, 6f<:. 279 



ceedings of the Geological Society, gives the whole sum and sub- 

 stance of the paper which he sent to the society, in which no the- 

 ory is offered to explain their origin. In the account published in 

 Jameson's Journal,* it was stated to be a cave like Kirkdale, of 

 accumulation by the agency of beasts of prey. I do not concur in 

 this opinion ; there were no gnawed bones in the whole collection, 

 and the mass was not collected in a horizontal cave, but in a 

 great fissure, into zvhich I conceive the animals have tumbled during 

 successive generations. The position of the bones in the vertical 

 fissure shows it never could have been a den ; they lie in heaps 

 amid angular blocks fallen from the sides of the fissure, and mixed 

 with stalagmite, and red earthy incrustations, forming a cement, 

 such as rains and trickling water may have introduced. There 

 is no sign of violent igneous action, no rolled pebbles, no frag- 

 ments of any distant rock, and in one case several bones of a 

 carpus, adhering together by stalagmite : these have clearly been 

 submitted to no violent agitation by water; but as the exact 

 circumstances in which this specimen was found are not men- 

 tioned, it is possible this carpus may be derived from one of the 

 most recently introduced animals. I have no doubt the fissure 

 has thus been supplied with bones by animals falling into it, as 

 in the Mediterranean fissures. There is no evidence to show 

 that there is in it any accumulation of diluvium. Mr. Pentland 

 is positive that the large bone found high up near the top of the 

 deposit, is the bone of an elephant; and Mr. Clift is equally posi- 

 tive as to Ihe tusk fixed in the anterior part of the jaw of a du- 

 gong. These are strange bed-fellows for kangaroos, wombats, 

 and the genus omne of present inhabitants of New Holland. The 

 place of the elephant's bone is known from the fact of a rope 

 having been tied to it, to let down the persons who were descend- 



• In the account given to Dr. Jameson by Dr; Lang of Sydney, and which was 

 published in the ed. N. Phil. Jour, for March, 1831, the bones are stated to have 

 been found " in a third chamber, generally broken, some strewed on the Jloor of the 

 cave, if-c." From the various accounts published on this subject, we also fell into the 

 opinion that this was a den which was not a stranger to a diluvial action of great ex- 

 tent. If these repositories of bones of the present races of animals found in New 

 Holland, are, as Dr. Buckland supposes, extensive fissures, into which these bones 

 have accidentally come, we have yet, thanks to the elephant and the dugong, two 

 pretty good bones to gnaw. In Mr. Clift's report, that which Mr. Pentland — who 

 studied with Cuvier — supposes to have belonged to an elephant, is said to bear a great 

 resemblance to the radius of a hippopotamus. 



