18 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



interred in the same manner, and by the same agents. In a 

 great many of these caverns, especially in that of Gaylen- 

 reuth, are found pieces of bluish marble, the angles of which 

 are rounded and blunted, clearly testifying the influence of 

 that diluvial action which hurried them along. A similar 

 phenomenon is observable in the osseous breccia of Gibraltar 

 and Dalmatia. 



The pachydermatous remains, so common in the loose or 

 ancient alluvial strata, are very rarely found among the fossil 

 carnivora of the Germanic caves : nor are the bones of the 

 latter very frequent in the alluvial strata. This circumstance, 

 at first, led M. Cuvier to assign different eras to those respec- 

 tive remains. But, independently of the fact that the reverse 

 is sometimes the case in these situations, the discoveries made 

 in our British caves have clearly demonstrated the contempo- 

 raneous existence of the animals in question ; and the Baron, 

 with that single-minded devotion to the cause of science inva- 

 riably characteristic of the highest order of philosophical 

 genius, has subsequently avowed that this important fact has 

 been completely established by Dr. Buckland. 



There are but three imaginable causes by which such quan- 

 tities of bones could have been accumulated in those vast sub- 

 terraneous repositories. Either they are the remains of ani- 

 mals which lived and died there undisturbed, or they were 

 carried thither by inundations, or some other violent cause, or 

 they were originally enveloped in the stony strata whose disso- 

 lution produced those excavations, and were not dissolved by 

 the agent which removed the material of the excavated strata. 

 The last supposition is refuted by the fact of these same strata 

 containing no bones ; and the second, by the integrity of their 

 smallest prominences, which will not permit us to suppose that 

 they have been rolled, or have suffered any violent change of 

 place. Some of these bones, indeed, are a little worn, but, as 

 Dr. Buckland remarks, on one side alone ; which only proves 

 that some transient current has passed over them in the de- 



