136 FLOOR OF SECOND CHAMBER. OSSEOUS BRECCIA. 
great. At h a side chamber descends rapidly into the body of the 
rock, and contains cart-loads of teeth, bones, and pebbles, dispersed 
through a loose mass of brown diluvial loam, but not united by sta¬ 
lagmite, as in the adjacent cavities, k and l. In these latter they are 
firmly cemented together into a compact breccia, and accumulated in 
a heap of at least 25 feet in depth, from the top, k, to the bottom, k k. 
The distribution of the component materials of this breccia is irre¬ 
gular : in some parts the earthy matter is wholly wanting, and we 
have simply a congeries of agglutinated bones; in others, the pebbles 
abound; in a third place, one half of the whole mass is loam, and the 
remainder teeth and bones : at k the top, and k k the bottom of the 
well, pebbles and bones occur mixed together in the same proportion 
as in the middle regions of it. The state of preservation of the bones 
when incrusted in stalagmite, is quite perfect, and the colour yel¬ 
lowish white; those extracted from the loose earth in the upper 
chambers are of a darker hue, and the total decay of some of them 
seems to have produced a blackish colour in the loam immediately 
adjacent to them ; but I could no where find the beds entirely com¬ 
posed of black animal earth described by preceding observers, as oc¬ 
curring in this and other caverns. 
All these phenomena are in perfect harmony with those of the 
other caverns in Germany and England; the upper parts of the 
existing cave, and probably others, which have been cut away by de¬ 
nudation, seem to have been the lodging places of wild beasts, that 
lived and died in them in the period preceding the introduction of 
the mud and pebbles ; the diluvial waters rushing, as they could 
not fail to do, into these caverns, would introduce pebbles and mud, 
and would also drift downwards to their lowest recesses the bones 
