252 
TilE GEOLOGIST. 
Tlie Fortland Ossiferous Fissures. 
Ste, — In answer to the objections, which you hare made in the last 
number of the ' Geologist,' to my opinion of the cause of the remains of 
men and of extinct mammalia being found in fissures of the Portland 
rock, which fissures do not extend to the surface of the rock, will you allow 
me to make a few observations ? 
In the first place, I think there can be no doubt that human and other 
bones have been thus found. This fact, as I have before stated, is positively 
asserted in ' Willis's Current Notes ' for August, 1852, and in an article in 
the 'Times' of the 1st of last January; and has been frequently con- 
firmed to me by Captain Manning, of Portland Castle, who has shown me 
the bones of men, of elk, reindeer, elephant, and of other animals which 
were found associated together in fissures, which, he said, did not extend 
to the surface of the rock. You say : " How could there be a fissure 
before the rock was consolidated, and are we to believe that the ele- 
phants, etc., and men too, lived at the bottom of the sea, as they must 
be supposed to have done if we accept Mr. Allen's theory ?" But in both 
of my letters, I said that I believed that the human and other bones must 
have been imbedded in the rock hefort its consolidation, and consequently 
before the existence of any fissures ; and that, therefore, the men and ani- 
mals to whom they belonged must have lived on some other dry land, 
which jn^obably no longer exists. My opinion is, that these fissures were 
gradually formed in the semi-fluid limestone deposit, partly by the human 
and other remains embedded in it and the putrid vapours arising from their 
corrupting bodies, and partly by the contraction of the calcareous deposit 
during the process of its drying. I believe that all the remains were im- 
bedded in the soft limestone at that interchange of land and sea of which 
M. Cuvier speaks in the following words: — "I conclude," he says, "with 
M. de Luc and M. Dolomieu, that if there be any fact well established in 
geology it is this, tliat the surface of our globe has suffered a great and 
sudden revolution, the period of which cannot be dated further back than 
five or six thousand years. This revolution has, on one hand, engulfed 
and caused to disappear the countries formerly inhabited by men and the 
animal species at present best known, and, on the other, has laid bare the 
bed of the last ocean, thus converting its channel into the present habita- 
ble earth." I think, also, that there is the strongest geological proof that 
the remains of extinct, quadrupeds found in caverns in limestone, were im- 
bedded in the limestone before its consolidation, and, consequently, before 
the existence of the caverns themselves ; and that therefore the animals to 
whom they belonged must have previously inhabited some other dry land. 
For there is evidence that man}" of these caverns have had no mouths 
as none have as yet been discovered, at Oreston, near Plymouth. Dr. 
Buckland, in his ' Eeliquia? Diluviana?,' mentions three of these caverns, 
in which were numerous remains of extinct mammalia, which were only 
discovered by men digging in a quarry for stone for building the Plymouth 
breakwater. He says that these caverns were " discovered by Mr. 
Whidbey in removing the entire mass of a hill of transition limestone, and 
that none of them had any discoverable communication with the surface 
of the earth. In the ' Times ' of January 22, 1859, I read a statement 
that "there had recently been discovered in one of the limestone quarries 
at Oreston, the teeth, bones, and other remains of lions, tigers,' elephants, 
rhinoceroses, horses, hyaenas, and other animals. The cavern from which 
the fossils were extracted was situated in the solid rock in the cliff of a 
quarry. There was no aperture or other indication of its locahty. 
