has proposed to limit the term alluvial to those partial deposites, the origin of which may be referred to the daily action of torrents, rivers and lakes; appropriating the term diluvial to the universal accumulations of loam and gravel, and antediluvial to the solid and still more ancient strata. The chalk-beds, oolite, lias, &c. may be taken as examples of this last division. The remains of fossil elephants, which are very generally diffused, may be considered as characteristic of the diluvial deposites. The alluvial sands, &c. of rivers, are familiar to all our readers.

It would appear that secondary Limestone, of almost every age, has been universally pervaded by fissures more or less cavernous; and that the phenomena connected with them, as the occasional absorption of rivers, &c. are everywhere alike. The mode of the formation of these cavities has not yet been explained; but it must have been of very ancient date: And it can easily be imagined, that if a tract composed of beds containing such vacuities were torn up and furrowed by a deluge, the newly formed valleys would cut the branching fissures in the most varied and irregular manner; so that the mouths of the remaining portions of the original caves would frequently open on the sides of the valleys; and sometimes, where they had at first been open to the surface at considerable distances from their former places of communication with it, and as the same operation also conveyed more or less of the suspended matter into the cavities, those which opened immediately upwards would be frequently blocked up.

9

* In a valuable Table of the superposition of the strata in the British Isles. It should not be forgotten, however, that the productions of Mr Smith, of which we have given an account (Edin. Rev. Vol. 29. p. 311, &c.), have been practically the foundation of this, and all the other enumerations of the English strata that have since appeared.

course of such a cave as we have now described, and at right angles to a valley into which it opens; A, representing the supposed place of the entrance, before the excavation of the valley; B, the actual entrance in the face of a cliff on its side; and C, a tabular passage which probably may have once communicated with the surface, but is now closed above.

As the agents concerned in the production of the phenomena we have just described, were of universal operation, considerable uniformity, in the resulting appearances, was to be expect ed in every quarter of the globe; and the author has accordingly found, that the caves and fissures themselves which he has examined, in England and Germany, are every where of the same construction. The next point of inquiry was, whether the nature and circumstances of their contents were the same, in other caves and in other places, as at Kirkdale; and here too the evidence is very complete and satisfactory: but we can mention a few only of the more remarkable circumstances.

Not long after the author's examination of the cave above described, a second cavern was found at Kirkdale, which was examined in the presence of Mr Buckland, accompanied by Sir Humphry Davy and Mr Warburton. It contained no bones; but the floor was covered with mud, six fect in depth, partially glazed over with stalagmite; and it agreed in every respect with the first. The absence of bones, the author justly remarks, the mud being present,--adds to the probability, that it was the instrumentality of the hyænas, and not of the waters, that introduced the animal remains in the former instance. About the same time also with this second cave, a great irregular crack or chasm was discovered in the limestone rock of Duncombe Park, near Kirkdale, terminating upwards in a small aperture, and lying like a pitfall across the path of animals; the crack itself descending obliquely, presented several ledges or landing places, strewed with fragments of limestone, and with the dislocated skeletons of animals, that had fallen in and perished. These bones were all comparatively fresh, and lay loose and naked on the places where the animals died; and, the author infers, that if fissures, as he thinks probable, existed in the antediluvian face of the earth, in much greater number than at present, the then existing animals must have fallen into them and perished, in the same way as happens at present; an accident to which the habits of graminivorous animals render them much more liable than beasts of prey; and this, he thinks, will account for the comparatively greater frequency of the remains of the former, in the antediluvian fissures. A cave, which was discovered about the same time in Derbyshire, demonstrates the connexion

which subsisted in the former state of the globe, between such fissures as we have just described, and caverns containing bones. In sinking a shaft near Wirksworth, the miners suddenly penetrated a cavity filled with loose materials, in the centre of which, nearly all the bones of a rhinoceros were discovered, along with those of an ox, and some of deer. As the work advanced, the loose mass continued to subside, and at length an open chasm, the existence of which had never been suspected, appeared, at some distance, in the surface of the field above. The author found, that the projecting parts on the sides of this chasm, were rubbed and scratched by the descent of the rocky fragments as they had dropped in. From the situation of the rhinoceros, it seems probable, that the carcass had been drifted into the cavern entire, at the same time with the diluvial matter.

A suite of cavities in the same neighbourhood establishes another important fact in this investigation; being situated near the edge of a high cliff, and far above the possible influence of any floods from the nearest brooks and rivulets: so that it is impossible to ascribe to their agency, the enormous deposite of ochreous mud which the cavern contains. Several of the caves in Germany also occur at heights far above the access of any of the existing river-floods.

A remarkable series of caverns, discovered a few years ago in the limestone of Plymouth, had been supposed to furnish an instance of complete enclosure, within the substance of a solid rock, of the remains of the same animals, which had in every other case been found in situations communicating with the surface. These caves also have been examined by the author in company with Mr Warburton; and his account of them, which is very full and satisfactory, corrects this erroneous opinion; and explains the causes of the deception, which arose merely from the intersection of the cavities, in places distant from their original openings. The remains last discovered in the Plymouth caves have been described with great accuracy by Mr Clift, and represented by that gentleman with his usual skill, in the Phil. Trans. (1823). Among these, were the bones of an hyæna, remarkable for its great size, the skull of which afforded those indications of extraordinary muscular power in the animal to which we have already alluded.

The story of a cave at Paviland, near the Worm's Head on the coast of Glamorganshire, is remarkable from its giving an ac count of part of a human skeleton which was found there. The cavern is on the sea-shore; and where the floor is beyond the reach of the sea, it is covered with loam, containing fragments of limestone, recent sea-shells, the teeth and bones of the ele

phant, and of several other quadrupeds, introduced by diluvial action; and of a woman, who, it would appear, had formerly inhabited the cave, and whose age and occupation may possibly receive some light from the remains of a British camp existing on the hill immediately above. The author thinks it probable that she was buried, with her habiliments, in the cavern, about the time of the Roman occupation of Britain.

Mr Buckland begins his account of some of the most remarkable of the caves in Germany, which he himself examined during the summer of 1822, by stating, that there prevails throughout them all, a harmony of circumstances exceeding what his fullest expectations would have anticipated: all tending to establish the important conclusion, of their having been once, and once only, submitted to the action of a deluge, and that, this event happened since the period in which they were inhabited by the wild beasts. p. 108.

The chief difference between the state of these caves and those of England seems to be, that the mouths of the former have in some instances remained open, and that they have been again occupied, in their postdiluvian state, by animals; and would, at this moment, probably have been tenanted by wild beasts, had not the progress of human population extirpated them from that part of the globe.

The circumstances which this examination has enabled the author to add to the descriptions previously given of the German caverns, are, principally, the occurrence of pebbles in the earthy sediment, and the important fact, that no bones whatsoever were discovered in any part of the naked or solid rock; the whole being confined, in every case, to the mud deposited in the lower part of the cavities,-a point upon which a different statement had frequently been made. The general state of their interior agrees with that of Kirkdale, in presenting, 1st, A false floor of stalagmite; 2dly, A bed of loam or diluvial mud, interspersed with pebbles, angular stones and bones, but without any alternation of stalagmite; 3dly, Beneath this mud is the actual floor, which is sometimes polished, as if by the trampling of the inhabitants.

In these caverns which seem to have been dens before the introduction of the mud, the bones increase in quantity as we descend to the lower vaultings, or cellarage;' which are choked up with the confused mass of bones, pebbles, and mud. In some places this mass is consolidated by calcareous infiltrations, into a hard osseousbreccia, resembling that of Gibraltar, but not so red, in which gal

*The term Breccia is applied to angular fragments of stone (or bone) united by a stony cement.

leries have been dug, to extract the bones; and of these artificial galleries only, it is true, that the roof and sides have bones adhering to them, for in the natural chambers, there is not a single bone except upon the floor.' P. 111.

The detailed account of the German caves is very entertaining; but we have space only for some of the more prominent circumstances. The section of the Biels-Hohle shows, that the entire cavity must have been filled, at one time, with a fluid suspending a considerable proportion of mud; for the interior is traversed by a series of rocky partitions, which, in passing through the cavern, it is necessary to mount and descend by ladders; and these have uniformly, on their tops, a deposite of mud, over which is a crust of stalagmite like that upon the mud of the general floor. In the figure already given at page 217, two such partitions are represented at DD, the dotted spaces above them expressing the situation of the mud, and the white crust the incumbent coat of stalagmite. A cave at Zahnloch (the hole of teeth) in Franconia, which takes its name from the abundance of fossil teeth that have been extracted there, has within it an insulated block of stone about six feet high, which stands like a sarcophagus,' and is described as having its surface polished, most probably by the friction of the skin and paws of the bears by which it was inhabited. Kuhloch is the only cave examined by the author, excepting that of Kirkdale, in which the animal remains have escaped the effects of diluvial action; and the only one' he adds, in which I could find the black animal earth, said by other writers to occur so generally; and for which many appear to have mistaken the diluvial sediment in which the bones are so universally imbedded! The facts respecting this extraordinary accumulation are very curious. It is literally true, that in this single cavern, (the size and proportions of which are nearly equal to those of the interior of a large church), there are hundreds of cartloads of black animal dust, entirely covering the whole floor, to a depth which must average at least six feet; and which, if we multiply this depth by the length and breadth of the cavern, will be found to exceed 5000 cubic feet. The whole of this mass has been again and again dug over, in search of teeth and bones, which it still contains abundantly, though in broken fragments. The state of these is very different from that of the bones we find in any of the other caverns, being of a black, or, more properly speaking, dark umber colour throughout; and many of them readily crumbling under the finger into a soft dark powder, resembling mummy powder, and being of the same nature with the black earth in which they are imbedded. The quantity of animal matter accumulated on this floor is most surprising, and the only thing of the kind I ever witnessed; and many hundred, I may say thousand individuals must have contributed their remains, to make up this ap