108 
HARMONY OF GERMAN AND ENGLISH CAVES. 
EVIDENCE OF DILUVIAL ACTION IN THE CAVES AND FISSURES 
OF GERMANY. 
I come now to consider, what is the evidence of diluvial action 
afforded by these caverns, and how far it is analogous to that which 
we find in the caves of our own country; and having made it my busi¬ 
ness during the summer of 1822 to visit Germany, for the purpose of 
investigating this important question, I shall now proceed to show by 
a detailed description and drawings of the interior of those among them 
which are most remarkable for containing bones, that there prevails 
throughout them all, in comparing them with each other, as well as 
with those in England, a harmony of circumstances exceeding what 
my fullest expectations would have anticipated; all tending to esta¬ 
blish the important conclusion of their having been once and once 
only submitted to the action of a deluge, and that this event happened 
since the period in which they were inhabited by the wild beasts. 
In every cave I examined, I found a similar deposit of mud or sand, 
sometimes with and sometimes without an admixture of rolled pebbles 
and angular fragments of rock, and having its surface more or less 
abundantly covered over with a single crust of stalagmite; and in 
those among them, which had been inhabited as dens before the intro¬ 
duction of the mud and pebbles, the latter are always superinduced 
upon the remains of the wild beasts. 
I had, indeed, in my first paper on Kirkdale, extracted the same 
conclusion from descriptions given by De Luc, Esper, Leibnitz, and 
other writers; parts of which I have subjoined in the note annexed. 
