4io The late Mr. Hunter's Observations 
conceive, that if the caves had been stuffed with whole animals, 
the flesh could not have produced one-tenth part of the earth, 
and to account for such a quantity as appears to be the pro- 
duce of animals, I should suppose it the remains of the dung 
of animals who inhabited the caves, and the contents of the 
bowels of those they lived upon. This is easily conceived from 
knowing that there is something similar to it, in a smaller de- 
gree, in many caves in this kingdom, which are places of re- 
treat for bats in the winter, and even in the summer, as they 
only go abroad in the evenings ; these caves have their bottoms 
covered with animal earth, for some feet in depth, in all de- 
grees of decomposition, the lowermost the most pure, and the 
uppermost but little changed, with all the intermediate de- 
grees ; in which caves are formed a vast number of stalactites, 
which might incrust the bones of those that die there. 
The bones in the caves in Germany are so much the object 
of the curious, that the specimens are dispersed throughout 
Europe, which prevents a sufficient number coming into the 
hands of any one person to make him acquainted with the ani- 
mals to which they belong. 
From the history and figures given by Esper, it appears that 
there are the bones of several animals ; but what is curious, they 
all appear to have been carnivorous, which we should not have 
expected. There are teeth in number, kind, and mode of set- 
ting, exactly similar to the white bear, others more like those 
of the lion ; but the representations of parts, however well exe- 
cuted, are hardly to be trusted to for the nicer characters, and 
much less so when the parts are mutilated. 
The bones sent by his highness the Margrave of Anspach 
agree with those described and delineated by Esper as belong- 
ing to the white bear ; how far they are of the same species 
