ANCIENT AND MODERN BONES IN IT. SEPULCHRAL URN. 131 
sulated block of stone, rising about six feet above the present floor, 
and remarkable for having its surface smoothed over (as if it had 
been polished), in a way which the natural rock never presents. 
There is much dripping of water, but very little stalactite hanging 
from the roof and sides of any of these chambers, and probably the 
floor also has never been invested with much stalagmite. At present 
it is strewed over, to the depth of several feet, with a mass of brown 
loam, mixed with numerous pebbles and angular fragments of lime¬ 
stone, with teeth also, and fragments of bones of bears, and other 
extinct animals, and with recent bones of hares, foxes, dogs, and 
sheep: I found also a fragment of a rude sepulchral urn, but could 
discover few traces only of black earth. The average depth of this loam 
must be four or five feet: the entire bulk of it has been again and 
again dug over in search of teeth and bones, of which it still contains 
considerable quantities. Even the smaller under vaultings have been 
ransacked to their extremities; so that there is no possibility of 
seeing in its natural state any part of this mixed mass, which now 
covers the floor. Still all its phenomena, allowing for the dis¬ 
turbances that have taken place by digging, are consistent in every 
respect with those of the other adjacent caverns: the introduction of 
the mud and pebbles may be referred, as usual, to diluvial agency; 
some of the angular fragments may have been washed in others; have 
fallen from the roof; the teeth and bones of the extinct animals may 
be referred to the wild beasts that inhabited the cave before the in¬ 
troduction of the mud, and the sepulchral urn to the use that has 
since been made of it for the reception of human remains; whilst the 
bones of hares, foxes, dogs, and sheep, are derived from animals that 
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