544 ON CAVES CONTAINING BONES 



of the Adelsberg cave accords well with this hypothesis ; 

 but the case is different with those which I found in the 

 heaps of limestone blocks and clayey mud. The bones 

 are not at the surface of the heap, but rather towards its 

 middle part, buried among the blocks, and crushed by 

 them. From this position, and the height at which the 

 skeleton mentioned above occurs from the floor of the 

 cave, it cannot be supposed that it formed part of the 

 bones with which the bottom of the cave is strewed, nor 

 that the blocks had fallen upon it. The bones contain- 

 ed in the heap in question must have been brought into 

 their present position at the same time, and by the same 

 cause as the limestone blocks. They could not, there- 

 fore, have belonged to animals which inhabited these 

 caves, and died there peaceably. 



If it be remarked, that these blocks, which are some- 

 times very large, heaped up above one another, and mixed 

 with clayey mud, have their angles perfectly fresh, and 

 are of the same nature as the limestone of the walls of 

 the cave, it cannot be admitted that they have been 

 brought from a distance. This mode of arrangement 

 could only have been produced by their falling from the 

 roof of the cave. 



The following facts also give support to this opinion, 

 In the cave of Gaylenreuth, a fissure of the third grotto, 

 was the means, in 1784, of disclosing a new one, fifteen 

 feet long and four broad, where the greatest quantity of 

 hyena or lion bones were found. The aperture was 

 much too small for these animals to have passed through 

 it. 



In a cave discovered in 1824, in the district of La- 

 narjk in Upper Canada, Mr Bigsby observed, that the 



