ORGANIC REMAINS. 89 



CHAPTER XII. 



General History of Fossil Organic Remains, 



As " the variety and formation of God's creatures in the 

 animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms " are special!}' 

 marked out by the founder of this Treatise, as the subjects 

 from v^diich he desires that proofs should be sought of the 

 power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator ; I shall enter 

 at greater length into the Evidences of this kind, afforded 

 by fossil organic remains, than I might have done, without 

 such specific directions respecting the source from which my 

 arguments are to be derived. I know not how I can better 

 fulfil the object thus proposed, than by attempting to show 

 that the extinct species of Animals and Vegetables which 



very extensive collection of fossil Bones made by M. Sclimerling in the ca- 

 verns of that neighbourhood, and has visited some of the places where they 

 were found. Many of these bones appear to have been brought together 

 like those in the cave of Kirkdale, by the agency of Hyaenas, and have evi- 

 dently been gnawed by these animals ; others, particularly those of Bears, 

 are not broken, or gnawed, but are probably collected in the same manner 

 as the bones of Bears in the cave of (^ailenreuth, by the retreat of these ani- 

 mals into the recesses of caverns on the approach of death ; some may have 

 been introduced by the action of water. 



The human bones found in these caverns are in a state of less decay than 

 those of the extinct species of beasts; they are accompanied by rude flint 

 knives and other instruments of flint and bone, and are probably derived 

 from uncivilized tribes that inhabited the caves. Some of the human bones 

 jnay also be the remains of individuals who, in more recent limes, may have 

 been buried in sueli convenient repositories. 



M. Sclmicrling, in his Rechercbes sur les Ossemens Fossiles des Cavernes 

 ae Liege, expresses his opinion that these human bones are coeval v/ith those 

 of the quadrupeds, of extinct species, found with them ; an opinion from 

 which the Author, after a careful examination of M, Schmerling's collection, 

 entirely dissents. 



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