124 CAVES IN FRANCONIA—POSITION OF THE DISTRICT. 
CAVES IN FRANCONIA. 
Having thus far ascertained, by careful examination of the most 
important caverns in the Hartz, that there exists no discrepancy, or 
rather a complete analogy in all their phenomena to those of the 
caves in England, allowing as much as is due to the different habits 
of the animals whose remains we find in them respectively, my 
next attention was directed to the no less celebrated assemblage of 
caverns in Franconia, situated in the district round Muggendorf, in 
the Upper Palatinate, about 30 miles N. E. of Nurenberg, in the 
direction of Bareuth, and nearly in a central point between the 
three towns of Nurenberg, Bareuth, and Bamberg, (see Map, at 
Plate XIX.) The position of this district is at one of the great 
water heads of central Europe, from which the streams descend on 
one side southwards, by the Naab and Danube, to the Black Sea, and 
on the other, by the Mayn and Rhine, to the German Ocean. It 
is composed of an assemblage of limestone beds, corresponding with 
the lias, oolite, green sand, and chalk formations of England, and with 
the Jura and Alpine limestones of the Continent; and forms the im¬ 
portant link by which the Jura chain, and its continuations in the 
Rough or Swabian Alps, are connected with the same formations in 
the north of Germany, where they are designated by the Wernerian 
appellation of first and second floetz limestone, and Muschel kalk. 
The limestone of the immediate vicinity of Muggendorf has been, 
from its cavernous nature, locally designated by the name of Hohlen 
