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can hardly be ascribed to the fact of the fossil mammals of 
those regions having been ignored, for they have been studied 
and described with the minutest care. It is numerically most 
abundant in the caves of Franconia. The cave of Kuhloch, 
for example, which in size is equal to the interior of a large 
church, contained, according to Dr. Buckland, “hundreds of 
cartloads of black animal dust, entirely covering the whole 
floor to a depth which would average at least six feet 
The quantity of animal matter accumulated on this floor is the 
most surprising, and the only thing of the kind I ever wit- 
nessed; and many hundred, I may say many thousand, indi- 
viduals must have contributed their remains to make up this 
appalling mass of the dust of death. It seems in great part 
to be derived from comminuted and pulverised bone ; for the 
fleshy parts of animal bodies produce by their decomposition 
so small a quantity of permanent earthy residuum, that we 
must seek for the origin of this mass principally in decayed 
bones. The cave is so dry that the black earth lies in the state 
of loose powder, and rises in dust under the feet.” * Dr. Buck- 
land estimates the whole mass of animal matter in this cave at 
5,000 cubic feet, which, at the too liberal estimate of two cubic 
feet*of matter for each animal, would involve the presence of 
2,500 bears. The dryness of the cave, and the freedom of the 
animal matter from loam or other admixture, call to mind the 
condition of the Egyptian sepulchres rather than an ordinary 
bone-cave ; and, so far as I know, have been observed only in 
this particular instance. In the rest of the German caves, as 
in the English, the animal remains are embedded in a red or 
grey loam or sandy clay, introduced either by streams or from 
the gradual drip of the water from the roof. The enormous 
preponderance of the remains of cave-bear over those of the 
associated mammalia proves that Germany was the head- 
quarters of the cave-bear, whence it may be said to have 
passed to the south and to the west, but not to the north. 
The value of the animal in classification, and its range in 
the geological past, are questions of considerable difficulty, 
which demand a most careful analysis. On the Continent it 
has not, as yet, been recognised among the animals from any 
pleiocene strata, and in our own country it has been obtained 
only from one deposit of pre-glacial age, namely, the Lacus- 
trine deposit at Bacton on the Norfolk shore, which underlies 
the boulder clay. During the post-glacial epoch it was asso- 
ciated with the mammoth, reindeer, cave-hysena, and cave- 
lion, and the whole suite of animals which compose the fauna 
of the period. Its remains are, however, distributed very un- 
* u Reliquiae Diluvianse.’ 
