12 
ACCOUNT OF FOSSIL TEETH AND BONES 
there was nowhere any black earth or admixture of animal matter, 
except an infinity of extremely minute particles of undecomposed 
bone. In the whole extent of the cave, only a very few large bones 
have been discovered that are tolerably perfect; most of them are 
broken into small angular fragments and chips, the greater part of 
which lay separately in the mud, whilst others were wholly or par¬ 
tially invested with stalagmite; and others again mixed with masses 
of still smaller fragments and cemented by stalagmite, so as to form 
an osseous breccia. In some few places where the mud was shallow, 
and the heaps of teeth and bones considerable, parts of the latter 
were elevated some inches above the surface of the mud and its 
stalagmitic crust; and the upper ends of the bones thus projecting 
like the legs of pigeons through a pie-crust into the void space above, 
have become thinly covered with stalagmitic drippings, whilst their 
lower extremities have no such incrustation, and have simply ad¬ 
hering to them, the mud in which they have been imbedded; an 
horizontal crust of stalagmite, about an inch thick, crosses the middle 
of these bones, and retains them firmly in the position they occupied 
at the bottom of the cave. A large flat plate of stalagmite, cor¬ 
responding in all respects with the above description, and containing 
three long bones fixed so as to form almost a right angle with the 
plane of the stalagmite, is in the collection of the Rev. Mr. Smith, of 
Kirby Moorside. The same gentleman has also, among many other 
valuable specimens, a fragment of the thigh bone of an elephant, which 
is the largest I have seen from this cave. 
The effect of the loam and stalagmite in preserving the bones 
from decomposition, by protecting them from all access of atmospheric 
