96 
LIFE OF DEAN B[ICELAND. 
[CH. IV. 
When Dr. Buckland was at Palermo on his wedding 
tour in 1826, he, as all strangers did, visited the shrine, 
and with his keen eyes saw in a moment that the bones 
never belonged to Rosalia. “Those are the bones of a 
goat,” he said, “ not of a woman ! ” Of course the priests 
were greatly scandalised, and declared that the saint would 
not permit him to see what only the faithful could discern. 
From that time, however, the bones were enclosed in a 
casket, and neither faithful nor heretics were any longer 
permitted to scan the sacred relics too closely. 
It was on this tour that the Professor recognised the 
comparatively late geological date of the great upward 
movement of the Alps, and declared some of the highly 
inclined rocks to be contemporaneous with our lias and 
oolite. 
On their return journey from Italy, Buckland and his 
wife visited the cavern of Lunel, near Montpellier, which 
yielded to the Professor’s strong arms and capacious bags 
many valuable spoils, which were deposited in the Oxford 
Museum. 
His account of this visit, which was made for the purpose 
of instituting a comparison between Lunel and the caves of 
England, is extracted from a volume of the Proceedings 
of the Geological Society. 1 
“ The result of the examination has established nearly a 
perfect identity in the animal and mineral contents of the 
caverns, as well as in the history of their introductions. 
In working a free-stone quarry of calcaire grassier , the side 
of the present cavern was accidentally laid open ; it is a long 
1 Proceedings of the Geological Society, 1826—1833. 
