Curious Geological Facts. igs 
£10,000. ‘They consist of one vast mass of compact close- 
grained marble, many specimens of which are beautifully 
variegated ; seams of clay however are interposed through 
the rock, in which there are also large cavities, some empty, 
and others partially filled with clay. In one of these cav- 
erns in the solid rock, fifteen feet wide, forty-five feet long, 
and twelve feet deep, filled nearly with compact clay, were 
found imbedded fossil bones belonging to the rhinoceros, 
being portions of the skeletons of three different animals, all 
of them in the most perfect state of preservation, every part 
of their surface entire to a degree which Sir Everard Home 
says he had never observed in specimens of this kind before. 
The part of the cavity in which these bones were found 
was seventy feet below the surface of the solid rock, sixty 
feet horizontally from the edge of the cliff where Mr. 
Whitby began to work the quarry, and one hundred and 
sixty feet from the original edge by the side of the Catwa- 
ter. Every side of the cave was solid rock: the inside 
had no incrustation of stalactite, nor was there any external 
communication through the rock in which it was imbedded, 
nor any appearance of an opening from above being en- 
closed by infiltration. When, therefore, and in what man- 
ner these bones came into that situation, is among the secret 
and wonderful operations of nature which will probably 
never be revealed to mankind.” 
The perusal of the above brought to my recollection a 
fact if possible still more astonishing: it is mentioned by 
Count Bournon in his Mineralogy, and as that work has (I 
believe) never been translated, I will here give the passage 
entire. 
“* During the years 1786, 7, and 8, they were occupied 
near Aix in Provence, in France, in quarrying stone for the 
rebuilding, upon a vast scale, of the Palace of Justice. The 
stone was a limestone of a deep grey, and of that kind 
which are tender when they come out of the quarry, but 
harden by exposure to the air. The strata were separated 
from one another by a bed of sand mixed with clay, more 
or less caleareous. The first which were wrought presented 
no appearance of any foreign bodies, but, after the work- 
men had removed the ten first beds, they were astonished, 
when taking away the eleventh, to find its inferior surface, 
at the depth of forty or fifty feet, covered with shells. The 
Vou. H:....No;.}. 19 
