OF CARNIVOROUS ANIMALS. 535 



often impregnated and covered with a crust of stalactite. 

 A covering of the same nature invests the bones in va- 

 rious places, penetrates their natural cavities, and some- 

 times attaches them to the walls of the cavern. This 

 stalactite is often coloured reddish by the animal earth 

 which is mixed with it. At other times its surface is 

 stained black ; but it is easy to see that these appearances 

 are caused by modern occurrences, and have no imme- 

 diate connection with the cause which brought the bones 

 into these cavities. We even daily see the stalactite in- 

 creasing and enveloping here and there groups of bones 

 which it had formerly respected. 



This mass of earth, penetrated by animal matter, indis- 

 criminately envelopes the bones of all the species ; and, 

 if we except some found at the surface of the ground, 

 and which had been transported there at much later pe- 

 riods, which may also be distinguished by their being 

 much less decomposed, they must all have been interred 

 in the same manner, and by the same causes. In this 

 mass of earth there are found, confusedly mingled with 

 the bones {at least in the cave of Gaylenreuth), pieces 

 of a bluish marble, of which all the corners are rounded 

 and blunted, and which appear to have been rolled. 

 They singularly resemble those which form part of the 

 osseous brecciae of Gibraltar and Dalmatia. 



Lastly, what further conspires to render this pheno- 

 menon very striking, is, that the most remarkable of these 

 bones are the same in these caverns, over an extent of 

 more than two hundred leagues. Three-fourths and up- 

 wards belong to species of bears, which are now extinct. 

 A half, or two-thirds of the remaining fourth, belong to 

 a species of hyena, which is equally unknown at the pre- 



