PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



1827. No. 3. 



April 20. — Lieut.-Gen. Sir Rufane Donkin, K.C.B. &c. of Park 

 Street, Grosvenor Square ; Major T. L. Mitchell, of the Quarter 

 Master General's department, Assistant Surveyor General of New 

 South Wales ; and the Rev. W. Whewell, M.A. F.R.S., Fellow of 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, — were elected Fellows of the Society. 

 The reading of Professor Sedgwick's paper, on the Magnesian 

 Limestone, was continued. 



A paper was read giving an account of the discovery of a num- 

 ber of fossil bones of bears, in the Grotto of Osselles, or Quingey, 

 near Besancon in France, by the Rev. Dr. Buckland, Professor of 

 Geology in the University of Oxford. 



The author visited this cave in October 1826, for the purpose of 

 applying to it the method of investigation, which his experience in 

 other caverns had taught him to adopt with success in the pursuit 

 of fossil bones. 



The Grotto of Osselles is of vast extent, nearly a quarter of a 

 mile in length, and made up of a succession of more than thirty 

 vaults, or chambers, connected together by narrow passages, and 

 running almost horizontally into the body of a mountain of Jura 

 limestone, on the left bank of the Doubs near Besancon. 



The only entrance to the grotto is by an irregular aperture about 

 the size of a common door, in the slope of the hill about 60 feet 

 from the river. The abundance and beauty of the stalactite in 

 many parts of this cavern, have rendered it one of the most cele- 

 brated and most frequented of any in France ; but before Dr. Buck- 

 land, no one had ever sought for bones beneath the crust of sta- 

 lagmite, which in most of the chambers covers the floor. 



On breaking for the first time through the stalagmite, the guides 

 were much surprised to find the author's prediction verified, as to 

 the existence of a thick bed of mud and pebbles, beneath what 

 they had considered to be the impenetrable pavement of the cave, 

 and still more so, to see that in every one of the only four places 

 which he selected for investigation, this diluvium was abundantly 

 loaded with the teeth and bones of fossil bears. These lie scat- 

 tered through the mud and gravel, in the same irregular manner as 

 the bones of bears lie in the caves of Franconia and the Hartz ; and 

 like them, are the remains of animals that appear to have lived and 

 died in these caverns before the introduction of the diluvium. The 

 bones were found no where in entire skeletons, but dispersed con- 

 fusedly through the mud : They were from bears of all ages, and none 

 bore marks of either having been rolled by water, or gnawed by the 



