150 



oxygen gas is known to all the miners of Thu- 

 ringia. It is the same as the action of the car- 

 buretted clay of the gypseous grottoes, and of 

 the great chambers (sinkwerke) , which are dug 

 out in the mines of fossil salt worked by the in- 

 troduction of fresh water. The caverns of the 

 calcareous mountains are not exposed to those 

 decompositions of the atmospheric air, unless 

 they contain bones of quadrupeds, or that 

 mould mixed with animal gluten and phosphat 

 of lime, from which arise, as we above observed, 

 inflammable and fetid gasses. 



Notwithstanding all the inquiries we made 

 among the inhabitants of Caripe, Cumanacoa, 

 and Cariaco, we did not learn, that they had 

 ever discovered in the cavern of Guacharo ei- 

 ther the remains of carnivorous animals, or 

 those breccia penetrated with bones of her- 

 bivorous animals, which are found in the ca- 

 verns of Germany and Hungary, and in the clefts 

 of the calcareous rocks of Gibraltar, The fos- 

 siie bones of the megatherium, of elephants, and 

 of mastodontes, which travellers have brought 

 from South America, were all found in the 

 light soil of the valleys, or elevated table-lands. 



of sulphuretted hydrogen. This marble is larger grained than 

 that of Carara (marmor lunense). It has been frequently em- 

 ployed by the Grecian sculptors, and I often picked up frag- 

 ments of it at the Villa Adriani, near Rome. 



