441 
of nature. These bones having been, however, preserved in the Mu- 
seum of Stuttgard, M. Autenrieth favoured M. Cuvier with a particu- 
lar account of them, and of the situation in which they were found. 
The place is situated about a mile from the small city of Canstadt, 
on the eastern ridge of Neckar ; the bones are found in disorder, 
partly broken, in a mass of yellowish clay, mixed with small round 
grains of quartz and bowldered limestones, with a quantity of small 
white fresh -water shells*. 
This mass appears to occupy the bottom of the valley of Neckar, 
between the calcareous beds, and joins at the bottom of the hills of red 
marl which surround the mountains of freestone. These hills of marl 
appear to be older than the limestone, and the limestone older than 
the clay. The marl contains plants of the reed family ; and the sum- 
mits of these hills are covered with marine petrifactions, such as 
belemnites and ammonites ; of which, however, there are none in the 
beds of limestone. 
The bones of elephants were found nearest to the surface ; the others 
were situated deeper. The bones of at least five elephants are pi eserved. 
There were whole cart-loads of the teeth of horses, but not a tenth part 
of the bones of the horses to which the teeth had belonged. Some bones 
of rhinoceroses were also found ; and the epiphyses of such large \ ei te- 
bral bodies, as could only have belonged to some of the cetaceous animals. 
In this clay were also found the skull of a hyena, the left half of 
another skull, the temporal bone of another of the same species, eleven 
grinders, four canine teeth, and twelve bones of the toes. 
M. Autenrieth has also discovered, in the neighbourhood, an entire 
subterranean forest of palms, many of which are two feet in diameter. 
* The circumstance of meeting with fresh water, and even land shells, among the fossil 
remains of land animals, frequently occurs. Thus the shell, Plate XIV. Fig. 9, apparently 
Helix arbustorum, was found among the remains of deer, at Brentford, in a stratum of light 
calcareous earth, reaching from sixteen to twenty-five feet from the surface. The fossils, in this 
instance had been, in all probability, cotemporary. Other instances, however, occur, in which 
we find the remains of animals of different eras intermingled: a circumstance which, I conceive, 
proceeds from the intermixture of the debris of different strata. 
VOL. III. ^ L 
