419 



animals have been collected, is a question which naturally arises; but 

 the difficulty of answering it appears to be almost insurmountable. 



It will not appear surprising, that these extraordinary accumulations 

 should have considerably bewildered those who have attempted to ex- 

 plain their origin and formation, and have led them to the most extra- 

 vagant opinions. One of the earliest conjectures, after that of these 

 caverns having been the dwellings of giants, dragons, and pigmies, and 

 of their having been the temples in which sacrifices had been performed 

 by the earliest inhabitants of these parts, was that they had been the 

 retreats of robbers, and that these were the bones of those they had 

 murdered. A more plausible conjecture was, that these had been the 

 retreats of various carnivorous animals, and that the remains were 

 of those animals which they had devoured. But even this conjecture 

 possesses not the semblance of probability; since these are found to be 

 chiefly the bones of carnivorous animals themselves, and consequently 

 would be the remains, not of the victims, but of the destroyers. The 

 more generally received opinion has been, that these are the remains 

 of animals which, on the advance of the waters of the deluge, re- 

 treated hither for shelter, where they perished, and their bones have 

 been preserved. The insufficiency of even this apparently more pro- 

 bable conjecture appears, when we recollect that these remains are 

 almost of carnivorous animals alone; and still more so when we learn, 

 as is the case, that more than three-fourths of these remains belonged to 

 animals, not an individual of which is now known to exist. 



The bones in the caverns of different mountains are all found nearly 

 in a similar state. They are detached, scattered, often broken, but never 

 rubbed down, as if by the action of water. They are lighter and less 

 solid than recent bones, but yet retain their real animal nature, and still 

 contain their gelatine. They have suffered but little decomposition/ and 

 are not petrified. Many of them are covered with a coat of earth, con- 

 taining the remains of animal matter; and frequently they are not only 

 covered, but impregnated and filled with stalactitic matter. In the earth 

 in which many of them are imbedded, pieces of a bluish marble are 



