114 
CAVE OF SCHARZFELD—STATE OF THE FLOOR. 
have been the actual aperture by which the animals came in and out 
whilst the cave was inhabited, and by which also the mud and peb¬ 
bles that occur below were drifted in. Descending by it, we find 
ourselves in a long and lofty cavern, terminated at one extremity by 
the fissure just mentioned, and proceeding in the opposite direction 
to a great distance into the body of the hill. It has several lateral 
communications and connecting passages, for a detailed description 
of which I refer my readers to De Luc’s Letters, vol. 4. The point 
to which I wish, at present, to direct their attention, is the state of 
the floor and position of the bones. 
The floor appears to have been at one time covered in many 
places with a crust of stalagmite, of which there are a few traces still 
remaining, but the greater part has been destroyed by visitors con¬ 
tinually digging into the subjacent mud in search of bones. In my 
drawing (see Plate XIV. c) this crust is restored to the state in which 
it probably existed when the first diggings began to be made in it; 
at present we see little more than a bed of mud and pebbles, and 
broken fragments of stalagmite, covering the bottom of the cave, and 
interspersed with teeth of bears and other animals, and fragments of 
bones. In some parts of the floor, holes like that at e have been 
dug through this bed of mud to the limestone rock below, for the 
purpose of collecting bones ; in other parts the natural rock projects 
above the surface of the mud, and is without any stalagmite. The 
general appearance of the whole corresponds with the description 
given of it by Gottschalk in his Guide for the Hartz : “ the bottom is 
almost every where covered with a fine loose earth, full of broken 
bones.” 
