Bone Caves. 57 



Besides this femur, we have a heap of bones which belong to the 

 two species of bears before mentioned, and among them some which 

 are more characteristic : such, for example, are some maxillary bones 

 furnished with their teeth. The greater part of these bones, shatter- 

 ed and fractured, have their angles blunted and their contours round- 

 ed, although in general they do not appear to have been brought from 

 a great distance nor to have suffered a prolonged and violent trans- 

 port. Like the bones of other caves, they still preserve their natural 

 character; they are not petrified, though they are rather more solid 

 than the bones found in the caves of Bize and of Lunel-Vieil. 



They are buried in a reddish mud or sediment, intermingled with 

 rolled pebbles, or fragmentary rocks of a small size. The mud through 

 which they are scattered, assumes occasionally a dark or grayish shade, 

 arising from the decomposition of animal matter ; hence the color is 

 deeper in places where the bones are most accumulated. This cir- 

 cumstance does not prove that the greater portion of the bones bu- 

 ried in caves were not introduced after the skeletons of the animals 

 were broken up. At least, these bones, like those of Lunel-Vieil, 

 are covered with fissures, and cracked more or less deeply. The 

 mud containing bones is sometimes covered with a layer of stalag- 

 mite ; but as this is not observed in all caves, it is possible that some 

 of them may have been dug up at different times, for some of the 

 caves have been used as sheep-folds. 



Our new bone caves, all situated in the department of L'Herault, 

 on both sides of the Cesse, in ascending towards the hamlet of Fau- 

 zan, a mile or more north of Cesseras, have this peculiarity, that they 

 are united in the same valley. They are, in fact, very near each 

 other, even those on each side of the river, and as they are all less 

 distant from high mountains than those of Bize, it appears equally 

 probable that large forests existed formerly in their vicinity. 



From this may it not be inferred that the species buried in the 

 caves, were, at the period in which they were entombed, distributed 

 as we now find them ? At any rate they seem to agree with the sta- 

 tions to which they have been restricted since the existence of man. 

 In fact, the remains of large species of bears are more numerous, 

 and essentially dominant relatively to other terrestrial mammiferae, 

 in the caves of northern or mountainous countries than in those more 

 level, or which in our southern countries are found in drier and warm- 

 er situations. 



Vol. XXL— No. 1. S 



