30 
THE OEOLOaiST. 
stance of the interior of the cranium of anotlier animal, together with remains, 
ai)parcntly belonging to the bear, wolf, or large dog, and the horse, with various 
other fractured boues cemented into a breccia-like mass by a mixture of clay 
and stalactite. These appearances coincide with what might have been ex- 
pected to have occurred in the case of bones that had accidentally fallen into a 
fissure, and it is not unlikely that they may have been rolled into it through a 
small deep hole communicating with the large cavern, but not sufficiently 
capacious to allow of entrance for the recovery of the carcass. The brecciated 
bones in the clayey stalactite might have been also derived from the larger 
cave by tlie constant falling into it of fragments of bone rejected by the earni- 
vora, and which, as might be expected from lying for some time in their den, 
would be well mixed with the clay that formed its bottom. 
A few of the bones were traversed in all directions by fissures filled with 
clayey stalagmite, a mass composed of broken plates of a tooth of the mammoth 
being in this condition — these facts possibly indicating displacement of the walls 
of the cave after the introduction of the bones, such dislocation affording the 
openiag, by means of which the superficial stalagmite was introduced. 
In concluding this part of my description of the caverns and their inhabitants, 
I wiU enumerate the genera of animals to which the specimens (nearly all of 
which are in my own possession) belong. 
(To be continued.) 
PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 
Geological Society of London. — November 30, 1859. — Professor John 
PhiUips, President, in the Chair. 
The following communications were read : — 
1, " On some Bronze Relics from an Auriferous San J in Siberia." By T. "W. 
Atkinson, Esq., F.G.S. 
During the author's stay at the gold-mine on the River Shargan (Lat. 59 
deg. 30 min. N., and Long. 96 deg. 10 min. E.) in August, 1851, some frag- 
ments of worked bronze were dug up by the workmen, at a depth of fourteen 
feet eight mches below the surface, from a bed of sand in which gold-nuggets 
occur. This sand rests on the rock, and is covered by beds of gravel and sand, 
overlain by two feet of vegetable soil. The fragments appear to have belonged 
either to a bracelet or to some horse-trappings. 
2. "On the Volcanic Country of Auckland, New Zealand." By Charles % 
Heaphy, Esq. Communicated by the President. 
The isthmus-like district of Auckland and its neighbourhood, described by 
Mr. Heaphy as a basin of Tertiary deposits, is bordered by clay-slate, igneous 
rocks, and at one spot on the south by cretaceous strata ; and it is dotted by 
upwards of sixty extinct volcanos, often closely situated, and showing in 
nearly every instance a well-defined point of eruption, generally a cup-like 
crater, on a hill about three hundred feet liigh. Interesting instances of suc- 
cessive volcanic eruption are numerous all over this district, sixty miles round 
Auckland ; and there seems to have been four distinct epochs of eruption, thus 
classified by IVir. Heaphy : — 1. The first was that which raised the trachytic 
