1894] - r3 eo Archeology and Ethnology. Wie 823 
1 . . floors, and how they got there has remained a puzzle to the present day. 
I found the gnawed fore-leg bone of Ursus spelaeus at the hottom of 
one of the chasms, but the Carnivora or men could not have brought in T OM 
the fossils, since none, it seems, have been mentioned as split for the * 
marrow and very few gnawed. 
If water washed them in (and this has seemed likely from the peb- 
bles found mixed with them), then we must imagine a valley nearly 
the size of the Niagara Gorge, as yet uneroded, with the Wiesent some- K 
how sweeping into the cave the bones and not the carcasses of animals ss p 
à that had perished along its shores. e" 
Animals often go into caves to die, but Esper urges they could not 
|: . have done so in this case, as he found no skeletons entire. He suggests 
an immense flood driving them to the cave for refuge, where, being 
drowned, their remains were washed about and broken by surging 
waters. But, after fairly stating the objections to this and other 
theories, he gives up the problem in despair. 
sper based his notion of the immense number of animals represent- 
ed, not on the fragments found, but upon a white, chalky layer of de- 
composed bones, which he does not describe as continuous, discovered 
by him in several parts of the cavern. If we give this up as a test of 
quantity, we have only left for a witness of the often alleged prodigious 
number of individuals im Gailenreuth, the thickly scattered fragments 
from 3 to 6 inches long, and in the proportion of about 15 to a half _ 
bushel of earth, which I saw on seratching with a hoe, at the tete of 
| | the chasms 
Spite of all the bone hunting done in the cave, there are peobeblg as 
.. many of these pieces (which no collector would want) as ever. Andif , | 
it is fair to guess at the ratio of bones to earth from them, and from 
the odds and ends set in the growing stalagmite of the walls, the num- 
|. ^... ber of entombed animals, though great, was not extravagantly so. ut 
aoe (3) The human bones.—The jaw and shoulder blade Esper found 
at a depth, not exactly stated, of several feet under an extending ledge — 
: of rock at'a point not since identified. They were bedded in a layer 
u one foot thick of fossils mixed with pebbles, which underlaid the white 5 % 
i chalky stratum of decomposed bones above-noted, and have been, un- . a 
- fortunately, lost. I found no description of the position of the skull — 
mentioned by Ranke as afterwards found in the cave, and taken to - 
England by Buckland. — 
e Potsherds, according to Esper, were found at depths of three fet, —— 
|. . and without more conclusive evidence, it must remain doubtful whether | m 
. jn this ease the human bones were not intrusive and to be referred toa 
| later time than t that of the fossi] PNE co on 5 
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