42 f. III. DIST. CHAR. Mode, 



remains. All these are found scarcely altered from* 



of various animals, concreted with fragments of marble and lime 

 often in the stale of mere splinters, the broken and confused relics 

 in clefts and chasms of the strata. Sometimes human bones are said 

 to be found in these confused masses." 



. " A very remarkable collection of bones in this state is found in 

 the caves of Bayreuth in Franconia." Some of these, however, it 

 is properly remarked, occur without any stalactitical concretion, so 

 that they belong strictly to the class of fossil bones that have not 

 acquired a stony character. We may add, that many, which are 

 even invested with stony matter, exhibit no sign of mineral impreg- 

 nation or change, and of course are merely in the state, to which 

 the present note refers (Privation). 



The fossil bones which belong to the other class, or those which 

 are not imbedded in stony concretions, have been " found in 

 all countries whatsoever, but always in the loose or travelled earth, 

 and never in the genuine strata. Since the year 1696, when the 

 attention of the curious was called to this subject, by the skeleton of 

 an elephant dug up in Thuringia, and described by Tentzelius, 

 there is hardly a country in Europe which has not afforded instan- 

 ces of the same kind. Fossil bones, particularly tusks and grinders 

 of elephants, have been found in oilier places in Germany, in Po- 

 land, France, Italy, Britain, Ireland, and even Iceland. Two 

 countries, however, afford them in greater abundance by far than 

 any other part of the known world ; namely, the plains of Siberia 

 in the old continent, and the flat grounds on the banks of the Ohio 



in the new" " The fossil bones found on the banks of the 



Ohio, resemble in many things those of Siberia ; like them they 

 are contained in the soil or alluvial earth, and never in the solid 

 strata; like them too they are no otherwise changed from their na- 

 tural state, than by being sometimes slightly calcined at the sur- 

 face; they are also of great size, and in great numbers, being pro- 

 bably the remains of several different species." " The ex- 

 tent of the tract, through which the Siberian fossil bones are scat- 



