62 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



jectures, antelopes or stags, Siberian hares and rats. 

 According to some imperfectly authenticated ac- 

 counts *, parts of a human skeleton are said to 

 have been found among the remains of those ani- 

 mals : we were not so fortunate as to see such 

 bones anywhere in Gibraltar, or to find them in 

 the stone itself. William and John Hunter cor- 

 rected the earlier statements of others, according 

 to specimens sent to themselves, and declared the 

 supposed human bones to belong to ruminating 

 animals. 



Over the stalactic stratum which we have de- 

 scribed, there is a more recent limestone breccia, 

 which lies on the surface of the ground, here and 

 there rent into separate blocks of rock. It consists 

 of a greyish white, or grey limestone, the detritus 

 of calcined shells, very few fragments of bones, and 

 a rather reddish, grainy, mortar-like cement ; the 

 pieces of limestone are here smaller, from half a 

 line to six lines in diameter, and instead of the 

 abovementioned grains of quartz, which are en- 

 tirely wanting, there are whitish, pearl-like globules 

 of stalactic limestone, resembling the Carlsbad pea- 

 stones. The calcined shells are far more numerous 

 here, and form in a manner, thin strata in the stone; 

 no entire shells indeed are to be found among 

 them ; they seem, however, from their thickness 



* Drinkwater's History of the Siege of Gibraltar, London, 

 1786. Imrie, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, vol. iv. 1798. 



