FISSURES IN GENERAL. 43 



others contain a mixture of bones, pebbles, marl, 

 land, and properties of different descriptions. 



These are known facts which the geologist will 

 not dispute. But the time of the introduction of 

 these remains into these openings, is a subject on 

 which the learned differ; Respecting detached 

 bones and teeth discovered in the solid rock, or in 

 crevices which have no communication with the 

 land, or with the sides of the rocks in which they are 

 found, I do not hesitate to say, that they must have 

 been imbedded there, or lodged in those crevices, 

 when that rock was in a soft btate. The large fis- 

 sures filled entirely with loam, and containing no 

 animal remains, were formed probably by the junc- 

 tion of the rock in those places being prevented, by 

 the argillacious matter which had collected there, 

 and had then no way of escape ; but when the wa- 

 ters retired, many of the caverns and fissure? so 

 formed and filled with marl, bones, pebbles, and 

 loam, would be left partly empty. Some time af- 

 terward, perhaps the rock in which they are now 

 discovered subsided, and widened those caverns, 

 leaving them with the matter found In them in the 

 fttate in which accident presents them to public no- 

 tice, other fissures communicating with the earth, 

 have been the unexpected graves of animals trav- 

 ersing the land which surrounded them, and some 

 animals perhaps have at distant periode been thro^i n 

 into those caverns, for the convenience of removing 

 them from public view. 



Could we suppose that this rock was formed be- 

 fore the deluge mentioned in the book of Genesis, 



