72 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. III. 
irregularly to different and distant parts of its lowest 
recesses. I could discover no stalagmite 1 and but few 
traces of stalactite in any part of this cavern, or of the 
fissure immediately connected with it.” 2 
Although Buckland describes several German caves in 
his “Reliquiae Diluvianae,” it will suffice to select the cave 
of Gailenreuth, near Muggenendorf, in Bavaria, which he 
visited in 1816, and again in 1822. It is by far the most 
remarkable cave in Germany, both for the quantity and 
high preservation of the bones that have been extracted 
from it, and, like other foreign caves, differs from those of 
our own country by having its mouth still open, and in 
the appearance of having been inhabited also in the post¬ 
diluvian period. 
Buckland describes the Gailenreuth cavern as 
“ situated in a perpendicular rock, in the highest part 
of the cliffs which form the left side of the valley of the 
Weissent River, at an elevation of more than three 
hundred feet above its bed. . . . The cave consists princi¬ 
pally of two large chambers, varying in breadth from ten 
to thirty feet, and in height from three to twenty feet : 
the roof is in most parts abundantly hung with stalactite ; 
and in the first chamber, the floor is nearly covered with 
1 Stalactites are like icicles of stone hanging from the roofs of caverns, 
formed by the dropping of water containing particles of lime through 
fissures and pores of rocks. Stalagmites are a deposit of stalactitic 
matter on the floors of caverns, sometimes rising into columns which 
meet and blend with the stalactites above. 
2 “ Reliquiae Diluvianae,” pp. 61 to 64. The bones from the caves ol 
Gailenreuth and Kirkdale, and a bit of the red woman’s bone from 
Paviland, can be seen beautifully arranged in a case on the right hand 
side of the Geological Gallery of the Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington. 
