ON CAVES. | 95 
versing about it with M. Bomfils, who was there at the time 
it was discovered. The cave is one of several which occur 
east of Mentone in the Limestone Rocks, known as Baousse 
Rousse, the Red Rocks. ‘The cave was partly filled with 
cave earth and angular fragments of limestone fallen from 
the roof and sides. In this the skeleton was found, as far as 
I could gather, interred. I learned that the implements which 
I noticed in the photograph had not been found with it, but 
had been put in to make a better picture. It appeared 
that, though found with the bones of the extinct mammalia, 
it was not Palzeolithic, but buried among them, and so it may 
have been of any subsequent date. The evidence, however, 
which appeared to assign its more probable age to it,—namely, 
Neolithic,—was unfortunately of no value, as the implements 
were not found with the skeleton, but only placed by it to 
make a more interesting photograph. 
Some caves, like that of Adelsberg, about twenty-six miles 
east of Trieste, open out into grand halls draped with stalag- 
mite and sparkling with crystalline incrustations. One. of 
the chambers measures 665 x 640 x 100 feet, and in another, 
on every Whit-Monday, a great ball is given. ‘The work of 
excavation is still going on here, for a river empties itself into 
the cavernous rock below the entrance to these grottoes, and 
is heard roaring in the deep recesses far within the cave. 
In other cases, instead of such vast halls, we find a more 
immense extent of galleries, as in the Mammoth Cave of 
Kentucky. Both suggest a great lapse of time. In this it 
is estimated that there are about 150 miles of underground 
passages. All the drainage of that area drops into great 
swallow-holes which join the general network of subterranean 
channels. In them a uniform earth temperature of 54 deg. 
Fahr.is maintained. No frost and thaw aid the denudation 
there. As long as the area drained has been unchanged and 
the amount of acid in the water has not varied, the rate of 
waste has probably been the same; and though we cannot 
offer any numerical estimate of the time it has taken to 
remove so much rock in this way, we cannot help feeling that 
it must have been very long. 
If we turn to the fauna of this cave, we get a peep at 
Nature carrying on some of her most mysterious work. Here 
we find animals modified to accord with their surroundings, 
organs unused being atrophied and lost. Where there was no 
light, they could not see. So many of the insects, crusta- 
ceans, and fish are blind. ‘The wild spring and headlong 
flicht of the grasshopper would be dangerous in those dark 
recesses. The poor insect would dash against the rock or 
