822 The American Naturalist. [September, 
did it impress Buckland who, though he visited the cave in 1816, and 
carried a skull afterwards found (now in the Oxford Museum) to Eng- 
land, seems to have regarded with indifference the similar observations 
of McEnery at Kent’s Hole. No further cave exploration was under- 
taken in the Franconian region until 1878. 
The Gailenreuth Cave or “ Zoolithenhóhle" enters the top of a gentle 
hill separated from the brink of the widest gorge (about 290 feet deep) 
by a level plateau. Cold and wet as I found it, in August, 1894, and 
accessible from the stream only after a steep climb, with an entrance 
(now walled up) invisible from the valley, and not at all conspicuous 
from the plateau above, the remote forest-hidden cavern, like Hartman’s 
Cave in Pennsylvania, had the look rather of an animal den than a 
possible habitation for primitive savages. 
Esper found its two spacious chambers as now level-floored with the 
entrance and ending in two or more chasms 20 feet deep by 6 to 10 feet 
in diameter in the rear. His description makes it uncertain whether 
he dug his trenches at the bottom of the chasms or on the chamber 
floors, how deep he went, and whether he reached rock bottom. In his 
search for bones the following points were noted : 
(1) The pottery—The whole cave floor (chambers and chasms) was 
covered with a bed of charcoal, above which rested a layer of potsherds. 
These he divided into four kinds: (a) rude hand made of red brick 
clay mixed with coarse sand ; (b) of rude, sandy clay, with fragments 
of quartz ; (c) of finely worked potters' clay, smoked dark and glazed 
outside and in; and (d) of carefully worked, fine red potters' clay. 
Repeating the notion of cremation of bodies, he supposed that the 
potsherds were the remains of the urns in which food had been placed 
near sacred fires built by Huns or Wends to the spirits of their kins- 
folk 800 to 1000 years before. 
This pottery is still abundant. I scratched out several pieces in 
the disturbed earth at the bottom of one of the chasms. Esper says 
that it does not occur at a greater depth than three feet. 
(2) The immense number of animal bones—The fauna afterward 
identified, given by Ranke, consisted of Mammoth, Giant Elk, Rein- 
deer, Cave Bear (dominant), Gray Bear, Brown Bear, Cave Lion, 
Cave Hyena, Woolly Rhinoceros,’ Wolf, Fox, Beaver, Glutton, Cave 
Rat and Ground Squirrel. The bones lay in confusion at the bottom 
of the chasms and in a thick bed under the potsherds on the chamber 
? Ranke (Beiträge 2, p. 196), quoting Dawkins, does not mention Woolly Rhi- 
noceros, Glutton (Gulo spelaea), Beaver, Arvicola spelaea, and Squirrel, but I 
found them labelled from Gailenreuth in the Schloss Museum at Bayreuth. 
Cu. MORE ORARE EIS es a S 
