418 



which leads to another small cave ; from which a sloping descent leads to 

 a cave twenty-five feet in height, and about half as much in its diameter, 

 in which is a truncated columnar stalactite, eight feet in circumference. 



A narrow and most difficult passage, twenty feet in length, leads from 

 this cavern to another, five and twenty feet in height, which is every 

 where beset with teeth, bones, and stalactitic projections. This cavern 

 is suddenly contracted, so as to form a vestibule of six feet wide, ten 

 long, and nine high, terminating in an opening close to the floor, only 

 three feet wide and two high, through which it is necessary to writhe 

 with the body on the ground. . This leads into a small cave, eight feet 

 high and wide, which is the passage into a grotto twenty-eight feet high, 

 and about three and forty feet long and wide. Here the prodigious 

 quantity of animal earth, the vast number of teeth, jaws, and other 

 bones, and the heavy grouping of the stalactites, produced so dismal an 

 appearance, as to lead Esper to speak of it as a perfect model for a tem- 

 ple for a god of the dead. Here hundreds of cart-loads of bony remains 

 might be removed, pockets might be filled with fossil teeth, and ani- 

 mal earth was found to reach to the utmost depth to which they dug. 

 A piece of stalactite being here broken down, was found to contain 

 pieces of bones within it, the remnants of which were left imbedded in 

 the rock. 



From this principal cave is a very narrow passage, terminating in the 

 last cave, which is about six feet in width, fifteen in height, and the same 

 in length. In this cave were no animal remains, and the floor was the 

 naked rock. 



Thus far only could these natural sepulchres be traced ; but there is 

 every reason to suppose that these animal remains were disposed through 

 a greater part of this rock *. 



Whence could this immense quantity of the remains of carnivorous 



* Description des Zoolithes nouvellement decouvertes d'animaux quadrupedes inconnus, 

 et des cavernes qui les renferment, &c, par J. F. Esper. 1774. 



