Bones discovered in a cave at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire. 219 
gluten, and acquired the softness and spongy appearance, as 
well as colour, of calcined bones ; still their form is perfect, 
and substance inflexible, and when struck, they ring like 
metallic bodies falling to the ground. These retain simply 
their phosphate of lime. In other caverns they are usually 
less decayed, but they sometimes exfoliate and ci^ck on ex- 
posure to air, and the teeth, particularly, are apt to split and 
fall to pieces, as are also those at Kirkdale.* 
M. Rosenmuller is decidedly of opinion with M. Cuvier, 
that the bears’ bones are the remains of animals which lived 
and died through successive generations in the caves in which 
we find them ; nay, even that they were also born in the 
same caves. In proof of which he has found some bones of 
a bear, that must have died immediately after birth, and other 
bones of individuals that must have died young. This is 
analogous to the case of numerous teeth of young hysenas 
with fangs not formed ; and the jaws of two that had not 
shed their first teeth, which I found at Kirkdale. 
Most of the arguments which I have used to show that the 
bones in Yorkshire cannot have been accumulated by the 
action of one, or of a succession of floods, apply with equal 
force to the cave at Gailenreuth, and it is unnecessary to repeat 
them. 
The above description of the cave at Gailenreuth, extracted 
from Rosenmuller, and confirmed by my own observations 
* It is a curious fact, that of the numerous caves in the calcareous hills near Mug- 
gendorf, that flank the valley of the Weisent-stream, those on the north chain con- 
tain not a fragment of the bones of the Ursus spelaeus, while those on the south side 
are full of them. This may probably be explained by supposing the mouths of the 
former to have been closed in the antediluvian period, and afterwards laid open by 
denudation. 
