In the cave of Balleye, near Wirksworth, in the county of Derby, elephants' teeth were discovered so long ago as 1663, some of which are still preserved.

The Dream cave, at the hamlet of Callow, also near Wirksworth, is very remarkable. Here, in the midst of a mass of diluvium, almost all the bones of a rhinoceros were found in very good condition, which have been carefully collected by the proprietor, Mr. Gell.

The cave of Nicholaston, on the coast of Glamorganshire, between the bay of Oxwich and the cape of Worms, which marks the entry of the Bristol Channel, deserves notice. There have been found in it, an elephant's tusk and molaris, as also several other bones of elephant, rhinoceros, horse, bear, hyæna, fox, wolf, ox, stag, rat, bird, and even the skeleton of a woman and her bone-pins. But several of these objects are evidently seen to be modern.

M. Goldfuss, in the New Memoirs of the Academy of the Curious of Nature for 1823, has extended his researches on the fossil bones of Westphalia and Franconia. He estimates that the proportion of species in them is nearly such that for 800 of the cavern bear (ursus spelæus), there are found 60 of the northern bear (arctoides), ten of the ursus priscus, 30 gluttons, 25 tigers or lions, 50 wolves, and 25 hyænas; which is just the inverse proportion of the contents of the Kirkdale cave in Yorkshire.

In the cavern of Sandwich, and in a smaller adjoining cavern, called Henri, there have been found at different times, besides fragments of bones

BONE CAVERNS IN THE ORESTON ROCKS. 581

of bears, a skull and portion of the jaw bone of a hyæna, bones of gigantic stags, of a stag like the common one, of a third species the size of a deer, a skull of a glutton, a fragment of the under jawbone of the hog, teeth and occiput of the rhinoceros, but no bones of tigers, lions, or wolves.

The bone caverns discovered in cutting down the transition limestone rocks of Oreston for the purpose of making the break-water off Plymouth, were the subjects of three interesting communications from Mr. Whidbey, to the Royal Society; one in 1816, one in 1820, and one in 1822. At the date of the last, the whole mass of rocks was nearly quarried away. He then states, that "the joints of the rock were not so close, but that water might drop down into the cave; and about these joints some stalactites were found in small pieces. I have not seen any thing to encourage the idea, that the cavern had a communication with the surface since the flood; the present state of the quarries shows nothing like it." We have in the same paper some valuable observations on the nature and appearance of the bones, by Mr. William Clift. In the Oreston cavern, discovered in 1816, although the greatest care was taken to collect all the bones contained in it, those of the rhinoceros alone were found. In the caves opened in 1820, one contained bones and teeth of the bear; while another contiguous cavity, of apparently coeval formation, contained only bones of a deer or antelope. In the caverns discovered in 1822, the bones of animals of several distinct genera were found, namely, the bos, the deer, the horse, the hyæna, the wolf, and the fox. These

cavities, however, communicated with each other, and the bones of the different graminivorous animals were found mingled together in the same cavity; but those of the carnivora at a considerable distance from each other; the bones of the hyæna having been discovered in a cavern, and those of the wolf and fox in a gallery. The only specimen in this large assemblage which bears any apparent marks of teeth, is a portion of the radius of a young wolf, which, in two or three places on its surface, has the impression of the incisors and canine teeth of some small animal of the size of a weasel. Some additional specimens of the jaws and teeth of the hyana, the wolf, and the fox, were discovered in one of the caverns; from which cavity indeed, all the bones of the wolf have been derived.

A discovery of fossil teeth, and other bones of hyænas, with those of the horse and ox, was made in June 1827, in the extensive stone quarries of Boughton, about 3 miles south of Maidstone in Kent. They were all found nearly together in one of the numerous cracks or fissures (locally called rents) that intersect, in this place, the beds of Kentish rag, which consist of limestone and coarse flint, dispersed in planes of irregular thickness through a matrix of sand and sandstone. Its geological position is in the lowest region of the green sand formation, immediately above the Weald clay. The fissures cut through the strata from the bottom of the quarries to the surface, and are filled with diluvial loam. The bones appear to have been drifted to their present place at the same time with the diluvial detritus of loam and stony fragments, among

OPEN FISSURES OF DUNCOMBE PARK. 583

which they lay, occupying a position precisely similar to the bones of hyænas and other animals that were discovered in the fissures of the breakwater limestone rock, near Plymouth, imbedded in similar diluvial loam and pebbles.

The open fissure in Duncombe Park, lately examined by the Doctor, deserves remark, on account of the illustration which it affords of the manner in which the bones of antediluvian animals may have been accumulated by falling into similar fissures,-now filled up with diluvial mud and pebbles. This fissure seems of postdiluvian origin; being a great irregular crack or chasm, in the solid limestone rock, which forms a steep and lofty cliff on the right side of the valley of the Rye. It is almost concealed by overgrown bushes, and being nearly at right angles to the edge of the cliff, presents a pitfall across the path of animals passing that way. Into this chasm, the Doctor descended, and found the skeletons of dogs, sheep, deer, goats, and hogs, lodged at various depths on the lateral ledges. Now, such fissures undoubtedly existed on the antediluvian earth, and probably in much greater abundance than since the grand aqueous revolution, which must have filled up many of them with its detritus. There is therefore no reason why the then existing animals, should not have fallen into them, and have perished; particularly when we consider that it is the habit of graminivorous animals, such as those which have left their bones in the breccia fissures of the Mediterranean shores, to be constantly traversing the surface of the ground in every direc tion in pursuit of food, they must be peculiarly liable

to the accident of falling into any imperfectly closed chasm that lies in their way. Thus we have an explanation of the comparatively rare occurrence of the remains of beasts of prey in those osseous breccias of the antediluvian fissures, although they also perished in them occasionally, as dogs still do in the open fissure of Duncombe Park.

On the Bone Breccias of the Mediterranean coast.-At Gibraltar, Cette, Antibes, Nice, Uliveto near Pisa, Cape Palinurus, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Dalmatia, Cerigo, and in the Veronese, curious bony Breccias, are observed filling up the fissures of calcareous rocks. In all these different and distant localities, the conglomerated fragments of bones are nearly the same. They are relics chiefly of ruminant animals, mixed with a few lions' teeth and exuviæ of other animals. The pieces of bone are impasted in a red earthy concretion resembling highly burned bricks, but spongy in texture from innumerable porous cavities of various size, which are bestrewed occasionally with a sparry incrustation. As the bones are not pressed together, the concretion which contains them must have been progressively deposited round them, as they fell into the rifts of the rocks. The bones have been in general broken to pieces before receiving their crust of spar; and are entirely dislocated from their organic arrangement in the animals; but they exhibit no signs of having been rolled.

The stony fragments of the breccia or conglomerate, are coarse-grained limestone (saccharoid), of a dark gray colour, containing now and then veins of white spar; and appear to have been rolled.