4 T BA The American Naturalist. [September, 
In the bottom of one of the chasms, which had evidently been dis- ` 
turbed by previous digging to a considerable depth, my scratching 
brought to light two teeth, a lower jaw and leg bone of Ursus spelaeus. 
The wet stalagmitic walls of the rift were scantily bedded with bone 
fragments, and I saw many pieces set in loose fragments of breccia 
which recent fossil hunters had gouged out of the walls and found not 
worth taking away. No doubt crusts of stalagmite projecting here and 
there from the walls over the cave earth had been broken through, but 
I saw no signs of previously-existing floors of large extent in the 
chasm. 
Here, where some loose bones steeped in carbonate of lime were hard 
as stone, while others projected from the drip looked comparatively 
fresh,’ the value of breccia, of fossilization, and of stalagmitic crusts 
covering underplaced layers as tests of age seemed small. Still more 
was I inclined to reject such criteria when, a few days later, I was - 
shown stalactites 60 centimeters long produced in fifteen years on the 
| 
reservoir roof at Bayreuth, and when Professor Adami, of Bayreuth, = 
told me that he had seen, in 1884, stalactites in a tunnel between Zel- 
fenkasten and Conters (in Switzerland) 6 inches long and forty years 
old. It was soon apparent that a great deal of digging had been done 
in the cave. No doubt the searchers for “ Unicorns horns” had been 
there before Esper. Doubtless * Neuhaus Hans " of recent local fame 
had found profit in the contents of down-reaching fissures. But, in 
` spite of the frequent overturning of mould and breccia, it might not be 
impossible still to demonstrate the meaning of the layers at Gailen- 
reuth. The bottoms of the chasms have probably, owing to the cramped 
space, never been reached, and several places may well exist in the up- 
per chamber floors that have not been disturbed at all. However that 
may be, Gailenreuth, the starting point of modern cave exploration, 
shows well the bearings and the difficulties of real work done in cav- - 
erns, and suggests many of the puzzles which still perplex the investi- 
gator. . C. MERCER. 
* 
3 Like the Cave Bear and Lion skulls in the Schloss Museum at Bayrenth. 
