MAN'S EXISTENCE ON THE GLOBE. 335 



of these caves, however, it is proved, must have been formerly known, 

 and either are, or have been, accessible by some other entrance ; for 

 inscriptions were found in them, with dates from 1393 to 1676, together 

 with human bones and entire carcasses that had been buried there. 

 Through these caves, M. Volpi (Director of the School of Commerce 

 and Navigation, at Trieste) asserts his having proceeded for more than 

 three leagues, almost in a straight line, and that he was stopped only 

 by a lake, which rendered it impossible to go on. It was about two 

 leagues from the entrance that he discovered bones of animals, which 

 he describes under the name of Palaeotheria, but which belonged to 

 the extinct Bears, whose remains occur in the bear-caves of Germany.* 

 The remains of Man, therefore, found in the caves which contain, with 

 the bones of recent animals, those of extinct species, prove nothing in 

 favour of the contemporary existence of the latter and the human race ; 

 any more than the circumstance of finding the coins of the present cen- 

 tury with those of the Saxon era, or of ancient Rome, at the bottom of 

 a pit, or lake, would prove a coincidence of time in their fabrication. 



* According to M. Bertrand du Geslin (Ann. des Sc. Nat. 1826), who visited this cave, M. Volpi 

 only found the bones where he did, because he had not been at the trouble of searching for them 

 elsewhere. The great line of chambers has the floor formed of a yellow and reddish, clayey mud, 

 from one to two feet thick, and more or less impregnated and covered with crusts of yeUow stalag- 

 mites. In this mud are the bones of Bears (Ursus spelaeus) in considerable quantities. Large blocks, 

 or masses, of compact white limestone also occur in some of the chambers, having their fissures and 

 interstices filled with clay, the whole being covered with stalactite : in an interstice, in a mass of this 

 kind, about fifteen feet high, and twenty in diameter at the base, the skeleton of a young Bear was 

 discovered. M. Geslin only advanced an hour and a quarter's progress, always finding bones, when, 

 the oil of his lamp failing, he was obliged to return, without reaching the block in which M. Volpi 

 found his specimens. He observes, that the bones occur in two different ways. First, scattered in the 

 clayey mud, which forms the floor of the chambers ; secondly, buried in heaps, formed of blocks of 

 white, secondary, compact limestone, and yellow, clayey mud : and he adds : " The hypothesis which 

 Cuvier admits as the most probable for explaining the presence of these bones in the caves, is that 

 which would make these caves to have served as a retreat to carnivorous animals. The presence of 

 bones in the clayey mud of the floor 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 toward its middle part, buried among the blocks, 

 and crusted by them. From this position, and the height at which the skeleton 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 contained 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, therefore, have belonged to animals which inhabited these caves, and died 

 there peaceably. If it be remarked that these blocks, which are sometimes 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 

 Galenreuth, 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 Hyaena or Lion ^bones were found ; the aperture 

 was much too small for these animals to have passed through it. It must also be remembered, that 

 the surface of the secondary limestone of Carniola is covered with a layer of reddish clay ; and, more- 

 over, that the clayey mud of the heaps in the Adelsberg cave is mineralogically the same as that 

 which forms the floor of the cave : may it not be supposed, that the same catastrophe which produced 

 the heaps in the cave, at the same time introduced into it the reddish, clayey mud of the surface, 

 which, by extending itself over the floor of the cave, would have contributed to cover the bones that 

 were lying there ? " 



