Lect. It 



184 THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. 



light and spongy character, and are very fragile, which 

 must have arisen from a want of energy in the nutritive 

 system, in consequence of a scrofulous affection.* 



41. Human bones, and works of art in caverns. 



Not only in the caverns of England, but also in those of 

 France and Germany, human bones, and fragments of 

 ancient pottery, have been found. As mankind, in an 

 uncivilized state, commonly inhabit caves, traces of their 

 having occupied recesses, which had previously been the 

 retreat of wild animals, might be expected. But as 

 bones of extinct species occurred with these relics of man, 

 it was assumed that they were coeval with each other; 

 more accurate observations have, however, rendered it pro- 

 bable that the human remains were introduced at a later 

 period. We have historical proof that the early inhabitants 

 of Europe often resided, or sought shelter in caves. Thus 

 Florus records, that Caesar ordered the inhabitants of 

 Aquitania to be inclosed and suffocated in the caverns to 

 which they had fled for safety, f Many tribes of the Celtic 

 race occupied these subterranean retreats, not only as a 

 refuge in time of war, but also for shelter from cold, and as 

 magazines for their corn, and for the produce of the chase, 

 and as places of concealment for the animals they had 

 domesticated. The bones of such of these people as perished, 

 or were buried in the caverns, would become blended with 

 the mud, gravel, and debris of the animals already en- 

 tombed ; and a stalagmitic paste might in some places be 

 formed by the infiltration of water, as at Bize, and cement 

 the whole into a solid aggregate. In concretionary masses 

 of stone of this kind, containing bones of the bear, and 



* Professor Walther, on the antiquity of diseases of bones; see 

 Professor Jameson's Cuvier's Theory of the Earth. Edin. 1827. 



f A horrible and atrocious cruelty, which the French, of the nine 

 teenth century, have not scrupled to perpetrate in Algeria ! 



