JOHN HUNTER ON THE BEARS OF GERMANY. 
147 
and others, that they have been accumulated in consequence of the cavities having been 
occupied as a place of retreat, or den of wild beasts during a long series of years—his 
words are, many thousand years; but he overrates this period considerably, grounding 
his opinion on the single fact of the different degrees of preservation of the bones in the 
same cavern. These, however, are not greater than those which exist in churchyard 
bones, or a common charnel-house, and may have been produced by the difference of a 
very few years, or certainly of a few hundred years, in the time of their exposure to de¬ 
composing causes at the bottom of the cave, before the introduction of the diluvial loam, 
which has since buried and protected them from any further considerable decay. Mr. 
Hunter’s reasoning would have been correct, had there not existed this difference in the 
degree of exposure of the bones before and since the introduction of the loam: had he 
been aware of this fact, he certainly would have seen the force of it, and his expression 
would probably have been, many hundred years, instead of many thousand. I refer to 
my note on the cave of Kiihloch, and to my account of Kirkdale, for further grounds on 
which I have founded my opinion as to the chronological inferences to be derived from 
the quantity of animal remains accumulated in these caves, and from the state and relative 
position of their stalagmite and diluvial loam and pebbles. 
