CAVERN OF GLUCKSBRUNN.

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tigers. There are two other grottoes in the lands of the same village, one of which Schneider-loch (taylors' hole), afforded an elephant's vertebra. The cave of Zewig, hard by Waschenfeld, on the borders also of the Wisent, is nearly 80 feet deep; and is said to have contained skeletons of men and wolves.

All these hills, scooped out into caverns, and so close to each other, seem to form a small chain, interrupted only by streamlets, and which graduates into the loftier chain of the Fichtelberg, where the highest mountains of Franconia rear their heads, and whence flow down, the great rivers, Mein, Sale, Eger, Naab, with several smaller streams.

It deserves to be remarked, that according to both Rosenmüller and Buckland, the hills to the north of the Wiesent, contain not a single fragment of bone, while those to the south of it, are well stocked with them.

There was discovered in 1799, a cavern remarkably situated, which connects in some measure those of the Hartz with those of Franconia. It is the cave of Glucksbrunn, in the bailiwick of Altenstein, in the territory of Meinungen, called the cave of Liebenstein by Rosenmüller, as it lies on the road to this bathing place. The limestone out of which it is hollowed, rests on bituminous schist, whence as it ascends, it reposes its upper beds on primitive rocks. This limestone is of variable hardness and fracture, and contains marine petrifactions, such as pectinites, echinites, &c.

In cutting through a road, an opening was discovered, from which a very cold wind issued; in consequence of which, the duke of Saxe-Meinungen caused further excavations to be made. A passage of 20 feet, conducted into a grotto 35 feet long, from 3 to 12 wide, and 6 to 12 high, closed at the end with a great mass of rock, which was mined away. After working for two years, they opened

up and cleared out a series of grottoes linked together, with floors alternately rising and falling. The whole terminated in a spot through which a run of water flowed; but different lateral clefts would lead us to suppose the existence of several other caves which have not been explored, forming altogether a species of labyrinth.

The bottom and sides of this cavern were coated with the same kind of loam, that lines all the others, but blacker. The bones were in considerable number, and were dyed of the same colour, but only two tolerably entire skulls have been extracted. One of them belongs to M. Cuvier's first species of fossil bears.

Caverns like these also exist in Westphalia.

In the county of La Mark, at Sandwich, two leagues from Iserlohn, there is a grotto which furnished, 25 years ago, a very large quantity of bones. A part of these was sent to Berlin; and another has remained in the country, among the hands of individuals; but hitherto no special description has been given of them.

If we glance our eye over a general map of the country, it will not be difficult to perceive a certain continuity in the mountains, where these curious caverns lie. The Crapack mountains are associated with the mountains of Moravia, and those of Bohemia, termed Bahmerwald, and both together form barriers between the basin of the Danube, and the basins of the Vistula, the Oder, and the Elbe. The Fichtelberg again separates the basin of the Elbe, from that of the Rhine. The Thuringerwald and the Hartz continue to bound the basin of the Elbe, and disjoin it from that of the Weser. Between these different chains, there are no considerable intervals. The caverns of Westphalia are the only ones, which do not so obviously run into the rest.

Very recently, fossil bones have been discovered in a cavern which lies more to the south, and rather on the back of the Alps, looking towards Italy. It is the cave of Adelsberg in Carniola, on the great

CAVES OF ADELSBERG AND KIRKDALE.

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road from Laybach to Trieste, almost equidistant between these two towns. The whole of that district is excavated with grottoes and caverns, which have produced even on the surface of the ground a great many hollowings, which give a singular appearance to the country. Several of these caverns have been long celebrated among naturalists.

of

That of Adelsberg is usually visited by travellers, because it is contiguous to the highway, and because it absorbs a river called the piuka or poike, which forms within it a subterranean lake, whence the stream again bursts forth on the north side, under the name of Unz. An aperture discovered by Chevalier Löwengreif in 1816, in one of its sides, at 14 fathoms high, admitted him into a range grottoes of immense extent and incomparable beauty, from the lustre and varied forms of their stalactites. A few of the grottoes, however, have been long well known. M. Volpi of Trieste, affirms that he has advanced more than three leagues into these caverns, almost in a straight line, and was stopped only by a lake, which rendered his passing further impracticable. About 2 leagues from the entrance he discovered bones of animals, since found to be those of the great fossil bears.

The cave of Kirkdale in Yorkshire, had the good fortune to be visited by men of science, and particularly by Professor Buckland soon after it was laid open, in consequence of which its organic remains have been carefully collected and accurately described. The little river Hodge-beck, loses itself under ground in the neighbourhood, much as the Piuka does near Adelsberg.

It is scooped out in the interior of one of the calcareous hills which flank the vale of Pickering on the north, the waters of which fall into the Derwent. The substratum of the valley is blue clay, like that which at Oxford and Weymouth reposes on a similar limestone, containing subordinately, beds of imflammable bituminous shale, such as that of Kimmeridge in Dorsetshire. The rock perforated by the cave is referrible to that portion of the oolite formation which in the south of England, is known by the name of the Oxford oolite and coral rag; its organic remains are identical with those of the Heddington quarries near Oxford, but its substance is harder, more compact, and more interspersed with silicious matter, which forms in the limestone, sometimes throughout its coral line exuviæ, irregular concretions, beds and nodules of chert. The more compact beds of this limestone resemble the younger Alpine limestone of Meillerie and Aigle in Switzerland; alternating with and passing gradually into those of a coarser oolitic tex

ture. Both varieties are disposed in beds from one to four feet thick. The cave lies in one of the compact beds, placed between two others of the coarser oolitic variety; the latter of which varies in colour from light yellow to blue, while the compact beds are dark gray passing into black, are extremely fetid, and full of corals, and spines of the echinus cidaris. The compact portions of this oolite, partake of the property common to compact limestone of all epochs and formations from the transition to the newer Jura; of being perforated by irregular holes and caverns in all directions.

FOSSIL BONES OF KIRKDALE.

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It was in the summer of 1821 that quarriers working here discovered by accident an opening which had been closed with rubbish, and covered over with bushes and grass. It lies about 100 feet (a late observer who measured it, says it is only 30), above the neighbouring streamlet; and it may be entered to 150 or 200 feet, but a person can stand upright only in a few places, on account of the stalactites which project from its roof. On the floor of the cavern, a carpet of diluvial loam is spread, about a foot thick, stuffed full of bones, as at Gaylenreuth. This loam and the bones interspersed through it, are invested in different places, or penetrated with stalactite, especially near the spot where lateral fissures intersect the rocks.

By far the greater number of the bones belong to hyænas of the same species as that of the German caverns; but there are also remains of several other animals, large and small, estimated by Doctor Buckland to represent 21 species.

According to the fragments which M. Cuvier has obtained by the kindness of the Doctor, and Messrs. Salmond and Gibson, the bones without any doubt, belong to the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, or (of the common ox proportions), deer, hares, water-rats and common rats. There are also bones of some other carnivora, particularly of the tiger, wolf, fox, and weasel. All these bones and teeth are aggregated in the loam, broken, and gnawed, displaying still the prints or traces of the teeth which broke them. Even the excrement pallets or balls have been recognised; and shown to resemble those of the