CAVERNS AND THEIR CONTENTS. 
453 
The vaulted roof of these caverns, formed by the crumbling away of the 
rocks, was clothed with a mammilated stratum of simple Ascidians, which live 
and die without moving from the same spot ; while from this bright-red 
ceiling there hung, like so many girandoles, transparent crystal-like Clavel- 
lince and the bright Botrylli, whose conglomerated masses exibit the colours 
and translucency of the agate. The smoother stones were all covered with 
Compound Ascidians, which were spread over the surface in shining green, 
brown, red, and violet patches, interspersed with markings of geometrical 
regularity, which severally indicated the different family groups of these 
singular beings. Among the animals appeared thousands of Zoophytes, while 
Star-fishes of the finest carmine, and greyish-brown Ophiuras, with their hve 
long and slender arms, lay hidden beneath the stones. Above them .he 
Flustra spread out its little stony weft, Sertularicis and Campanularias raised 
aloft their arborescent polyparies, resembling miniature shrubs, while the 
Eschara threw its microscopic cellules over the stems and fronds of the 
marine plants. Sponges of every form and colour were intertwined among 
the branches of the fucus and attached to the sides of the rocks, either in 
thick masses or in interlacing meshes of delicate net-work. Here and there 
the Thetya might be seen, its rounded lobes bristling with little specula, side 
by side with the finger-like masses of Alcyonium and Lohularia, while some- 
times a Holothtiria (or sea-cucumber), with its long, polygonal, whitish body, 
would slowly move across this living tapestry, by means of its sucker-like feet, 
spreading abroad its coronet of arborescent tentacles.”* 
Such are the living’ contents of marine caverns, not only in 
the little islands of the Chaussey Archipelago, as alluded to 
more especially by M. de Quatrefages, but in the wonderful 
Gouliot caverns of Sark, in the smaller but interesting caves of 
St. Catharine’s, near Tenby, and in many others less celebrated 
on other parts of the coast of England and Europe. 
But caverns are sometimes tenanted by other and very 
different races. In countries little cultivated, and where wild 
animals are common in the adjacent forests, the bear, the 
hygena, and some other beasts of prey, occupy caverns as dens, 
or use them either as larders or as burial-places. Sometimes 
they bring in and deposit there the carcases of their victims, 
sometimes they would seem to retire there to die. The skeletons 
and bones accumulated from either of these habits are not un- 
frequently heaped in quantities almost incredible, and they are 
sometimes mixed with and sometimes coated with recently 
formed stalagmite. Elsewhere, bones, shells, and various re- 
mains of animals have been washed into caverns on the occasion 
of some unusual flood, or have fallen in from above with stones, 
boulders, or angular fragments of rock. The caverns are thus 
sometimes floored with bones near the entry ; sometimes the 
deeper recesses are choked 'with them to a great depth ; and 
* “Rambles of a Naturalist,” ride supra, translated by E. C. Otfr, vol. i. 
p. 38. 
NO. IV. 2 I 
