64 CAVE CONTAINING RHINOCEROS. 
tirely void, and seen to form a direct communication from the side of 
the cave to the surface of the field above. Till undermined in this 
manner, the fissure d had been entirely filled, and the surface afforded 
not the slightest indication of its existence; at present it is restored 
to the same state of an open chasm in which it probably was before 
the access of the diluvian waters, that appear to have swept into it 
the mud and rocky fragments Which filled both it and the cave below ; 
and on examining its sides, I found the projecting parts of them rubbed 
and scratched by the descent of these heavy bodies as they dropped in 
from above. From the situation of the rhinoceros’ bones in the middle 
of this drifted mass, and in the centre of the cave, added to the juxta¬ 
position of so many of the component parts of one entire skeleton, 
which are neither rolled, or gnawed, or broken, except by the move¬ 
ment they have recently undergone, and the pickaxes of the miners, it 
seems probable that they are the remains of a carcase that was drifted 
in entire at the same time with the diluvial detritus, in the midst of 
which they were found imbedded: had they been washed in singly, 
they would have been slightly rolled and scattered irregularly, and 
we should probably have found parts of more than a single individual; 
and had they been derived from an animal that fell into the fissure, and 
perished before the introduction of the diluvium, they would not have 
been suspended, as they were, all together nearly in the middle of it, 
but would have lain either on the actual floor of the cave beneath the 
loam and pebbles, or have been scattered and drifted irregularly to 
different and distant parts of its lowest recesses. I could discover no 
stalagmite, and but few traces of stalactite in any part of this cavern, 
or of the fissure immediately connected with it. 
