429 



These bones having been however preserved in the Museum of Stuttgard, 

 M. Autenrieth favoured M. Cuvier with a particular account of them, 

 and of the situation in which they were found. 



The place is situated about a mile from the small city of Canstadt, on 

 the eastern ridge of Neckar; the bones are found in disorder, partly 

 broken, in a mass of yellowish clay, mixed with small round grains of 

 quartz and bowldered limestones, with a quantity of small white fresh- 

 water shells *. 



This mass appears to occupy the bottom of the valley of Neckar, be- 

 tween the calcareous beds, and joins at the bottom of the hills of red marl 

 which surround the mountains of freestone. These hills of marl appear to 

 be older than the limestone, and the limestone older than the clay. The 

 marl contains plants of the reed family ; and the summits of these hills 

 "are covered with marine petrifactions, such as belemnites and ammo- 

 nites; of which, however, there are none in the beds of limestone. 



The bones of elephants were found nearest to the surface ; the others 

 were situated deeper. The bones of at least five elephants are preserved. 

 There were whole cart-loads of the teeth of horses, but not a tenth part 

 of the bones of the horses to which the teeth had belonged. Some bones 

 of rhinoceroses were also found ; and the epiphyses of such large vertebral 

 bodies, as could only have belonged to some of the cetaceous animals. 



In this clay were also found the skull of a hyena, the left half of another 

 skull, the temporal bone of another of the same species; eleven grinders, 

 four canine teeth, and twelve bones of the toes. 



M. Autenrieth has also discovered, in the neighbourhood, an entire 

 subterranean forest of palms, many of which are two feet in diameter. 



* The circumstance of meeting with fresh water, and even land shells, among the fossil 

 remains of land animals, frequently occurs. Thus the shell, Plate XIV. Fig. 9, apparently 

 Helix arbustorum, was found among the remains of deer, at Brentford, in a stratum of light 

 calcareous earth, reaching from sixteen to twenty-five feet from the surface. The fossils, 

 in this instance, had heen, in all probability, cotemporary. Other instances, however, occur, 

 in which we find the remains of animals of different eras intermingled : a circumstance 

 which, I conceive, proceeds from the intermixture of the debris of different strata. 



