58 Bone Caves. 



The new bone caves then, which M. Pittore has just discovered, 

 are, as it were, united at the foot of the calcareous chain which pre- 

 cedes, in a manner, the primitive mountains of the neighborhood of 

 Saint-Pons. These caves, situated in a wild valley, in the center of 

 a wood which formerly was in all probability a great forest, are prin- 

 cipally characterized by bears of the largest and strongest form. 

 They are the Ursus spelce-us and arctoideus, which are found in great 

 quantides in the caves of Germany and the north of France. Deer, 

 (animals which frequent similar stations and indicate the same sort of 

 region,) are mingled with their remains. Both of them are associa- 

 ted with animals of the rabbit genus, with different kinds of birds, 

 and with reptiles of the tortoise kind. But with all these different 

 species, there is not discovered that immense quantity of horses 

 whose remains compose the greater part of the population driven 

 into the caves of Bize ; from which the caves of Fauzan are never- 

 theless but a few leagues distant. 



Is not this circumstance to be explained on the principle that the 

 horses were masters of the vast marshes and the plain, in the neigh- 

 borhood of Narbonne ; while the bears, banished to the mountains, 

 as they would be at the present time, if they still existed, frequented 

 the forests and the woods of the north, at a great distance from the 

 Mediterranean? At all events, the accumulated bones in the caves 

 of Fauzan are not of the same kind as those in the caverns of Bize. 

 The number of animals driven into the former is considerably less 

 than that in the latter, particularly in relation to the number of indi- 

 viduals. The bone mud of Bize is a sort of bony paste. In the 

 subterranean caves of Fauzan the bones are sufficiently distinct to 

 show that the animals have been brought thither at very different 

 ages, some having their teeth almost entirely worn out, and others 

 presenting numerous epiphyses, the teeth not having issued from 

 their alveoles. 



Two of the bone caves examined by M. Pittore are on the left 

 bank of the Cesse and three on the right. The latter are the only 

 ones, which in consequence of their imposing aspect, as well as from 

 their grandeur and importance, have received particular names, and 

 attracted the attention of naturalists. The first, known in the country 

 under the name o{ Baume d^jlldenne, and designated liy Gensanne un- 

 der that o( Baume de la Coquille, had struck this naturalist, on account 

 of the pottery which he had observed in the slime which cov^ered the 

 surface ; but as, at the time when Gensanne visited these caverns. 



