Scientyic hitelligence. ^Geognosy. 409 
GEOGNOSY. 
11. Human Skeletons found inclosed in Calcareous Tufa 
In India. — To get at an aqueduct, which was to be repaired 
at Ahraedravgur in 1821, it was necessary to cut to the depth 
of fifteen or twenty feet, through a sort of sandstone which co- 
vered it. The stone, which is a calcareous tufa, is called by the 
natives Morrum, and the name is adopted by Europeans. It is 
found near the surface ; of great thickness, in most parts of the 
Deccan ; and in many places presents itself naked and barren. 
On digging for the aqueduct above mentioned, at the depth of 
eight or ten feet, there were found lying across its course seve- 
ral human skeletons completely imbedded in the morrum, or 
rather surrounded by it ; for there remained the hollow space 
that had been occupied by the corpse, and above, below, and 
round it, the morrum appeared as solid as if it had never before 
been cut into. Now, as we know that the aqueduct, over 
which the skeletons were found, was only built about 300 years 
ago ; that the ground over it had subsequently been a cemetry, 
that morrum, though ever so much broken, will, by the influence 
of water, unite again, and become compact; and that it is neces- 
sary, when the earth on the surface is thin, as at Poonah, to dig 
the grave into the morrum, we can account for those skeletons 
being so imbedded ; but had we found them without a know- 
ledge of such circumstances, we might have been led to consider 
them as remains of an earlier period, and to have been deposi- 
ted there by other means. — Captain Stirling. 
12. Hyccna Caves in Devonshire. — Professor Buckland has 
lately examined two caves in Devonshire, in both of which he 
found, in a bed of mud beneath a crust of calc-sinter, gnawed 
fragments and splinters of bones, with teeth of hyaenas and 
bears. There were no entire bones except the solid ones of the 
toes, heels, 8cc., as at Kirkdale, which were too hard for the teeth 
of the hyaena. They appear simplj to have been dens, but less 
abundantly inhabited than that at Kirkdale. In the same cave. 
Professor Buckland found one tooth of the rhinoceros, and two 
or three only of the horse. 
13. Remains of the Fossil Elephant found in Ayrshire.-^ 
Tusks of the fossil Elephant were last month found in old al- 
