The correspondence of the animal remains in caves with those in the superficial beds of loam and gravel is a remarkable fact, but it does not prove that they existed at the same period, or were simultaneously destroyed; for it is evident, a much higher antiquity must be assigned to a large portion of the inhabitants of those caves, in which countless generations had lived and died, and a vast accumulation of animal ruins had been effected, anterior to the action of the diluvial torrent, which overwhelmed the surviving individuals, and covered up the whole with extraneous matter. Besides,

in many cases, the caves had not only been occupied for centuries, but these last effects were produced-they were abandoned and closed up-long before the surface of the earth experienced the violent denuding effect of the

the cave of Kühloch in Franconia. He says " There are hundreds of cart-loads of black animal dust entirely covering the whole floor, to a depth which must average at least six feet, and which if we multiply the depth by the length and breadth of the cavern, will be found to exceed five thousand cubic feet. The quantity of animal matter accumulated on this floor is the 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 appalling mass of the dust of death. It seems in great part to be derived from comminuted and pulverised bone; for the fleshy parts of animal bodies, produce by their decomposition, so small a quantity of permanent earthy residuum, that we must seek for the origin of this mass principally in decayed bones. The cave is so dry, that the black earth lies in the state of loose powder and rises in dust under the feet; it also retains so large a proportion of its original animal matter that it is used occasionally by the peasants as an enriching manure for the adjacent meadows."-Reliqua Diluvianæ, p. 138.

deluge. This, the remarkable position of the entrances of many of the bony caverns, especially those of Germany, seems to prove. These are very commonly in inaccessible situations in the face of precipitous rocks, such as those of the remarkable caverns of Rabenstein, Kühloch, and Schneiderloch, in the gorge of the Esbach river in Franconia, described by Dr. Buckland. In these instances the original entrances of the caverns are supposed to have been, not in the perpendicular sides of the rocks where they are now found, but on the surface of the elevated ground through which the river-gorge has been excavated. This, the wood-engraving will render more intelligible.

The entrance to the cave of Rabenstein is seen on the right, in the face of the cliff beneath the chapel (a); the river Esbach flows down the centre of the denuded dell; and the caves of Kühloch (b), and Schneiderloch (c), are midway up the sides of the opposite cliffs. Dr. Buckland very fairly infers that the high ground on each side of the gorge, was originally continuous, and that the mouths of the caverns were on the level of the country in the space now occupied by the valley, as at

Scharzfeld and other similar situations, and that at these entrances the pebbles and diluvial mud which envelope the bones were introduced: at the same time, he supposes, the upper part of the caves were cut off, and the gorge excavated: but there appears some inconsistency in attributing to the same agency, effects so dissimilar as the quiet deposition of a thin stratum of mud in the caverns, and the exertion of a force so violent as to cut out a channel in the solid rocks more than a hundred feet deep; one of these caves, moreover, like that of Kirkdale, exhibits no traces of the diluvial action in its interior: the aperture, therefore, must have been previously closed. All the circumstances, indeed, justify the inference that these effects have been produced by a succession of causes operating at distinct periods; although the phenomena of osseous caverns and breccia generally, may be referred to the last transient rush of waters over the surface-the great debacle whose effects we everywhere discover.*

* Mr. Lyell, and other writers, suppose that the earth's surface underwent no great modification, at the era of the Mosaic deluge, and that the strictest interpretation of the scriptural narrative does not warrant us in expecting to find any gelogical monuments of the catastrophe. That there was no impetuous rushing of the waters, Mr. Lyell argues, the olive branch brought back by the dove, is an unequivocal proof, as it is a clear indication that the vegetation was not destroyed. His geological objections to the universality of the flood are-1st, That there are cones or minor volcanos on the flanks of Etna, at least ten thousand years old, which have escaped the denuding force. 2nd, There are living trees, such as the Taxodium of Mexico, (one hundred and seventeen feet in circumference,) which according to De Candolle, have stood more than five thousand years. 3rd, That many alluviums are of

Dr. Buckland deduces another consequence from the inhabited caves and osseous fissures, i. e. that the relative permanent position of sea and land was not materially altered by the deluge, but that the antediluvian surface or at least a large portion of the northern hemisphere was the same with the present. This opinion, though in the main a legitimate conclusion, must be

more remote antiquity than the period assigned to the deluge. 4th, That the extinct volcanic region of France, respecting the action of which history and tradition, although they go back two thousand years, are silent, exhibits no traces of the diluvial wave, the cones of loose cinders and craters, several hundred in number, not having been disturbed since their eruption. The scriptural deluge he regards as a preternatural event, far beyond the reach of philosophical inquiry, whether as to the secondary causes employed to produce it, or the effects resulting from it. It is not a little singular, that a theorist who with Titanic hand lifts up mountains at the equator, and sinks the elevated regions of the north beneath the ocean, in order to account for the change of climate which geological phenomena prove to have taken place, should be so scrupulous about the introduction of secondary causes. The difficulties he has stated are merely negative, and the grounds upon which they are raised purely hypothetical, while the positive proofs the more obvious diluvial phenomena―remain unexplained. Thus the remote antiquity assigned to the Etnean cones, is deduced from the effects observed to take place from the action of the volcano in modern times. Cuvier expresses in strong terms his opinion of the inadequacy of existing causes to the production of geological phenomena :-"C'est en vain que l'on cherche dans les forces qui agissent maintenant à la surface de la terre, des causes suffisantes pour produire les révolutions et les catastrophes dont son enveloppe nous montre les traces; et si l'on veut recourir aux forces extérieures constantes connues jusqu'à présent, l'on n'y trouve pas plus de ressources.'

admitted only with modifications:* the force which denuded the valleys might have excavated the basins of shallow seas; and we have seen how the coasts of the Mediterranean, where the osseous breccia exist in such abundance, have been disturbed. And we have other proofs of similar disturbances yet to examine.

A remarkable feature of our coasts are the submarine forests as they are termed-buried trees, which lie in immense numbers beneath the soil of our fens and other flat lands. The level country adjoining the coast from the Humber to Norfolk, an immense tract of land which the industry and wealth of modern times has fertilized, is filled with the vestiges of these ancient forests, although not a tree at present enlivens the dull monotony of its surface. These vestiges consist of the stems, branches, and roots, and even leaves, of the oak, birch, fir, and other trees and shrubs, sometimes found in a state of perfect preservation, the wood retaining its natural fibre and original hardness. In many places they are found beneath a sedimentary deposit, such as that now left by the adjacent sea on the coasts, of considerable thickness, as if an inundation of the ocean had taken place since the destruction of the forests. The

"Wherever such caves and fissures occur, i. e. in the greater part of Europe, and in whatever other part of the world such bones may be found under similar circumstances, there did not take place any such interchange of the surfaces occupied respectively by land and water, as many writers of high authority have conceived to have immediately succeeded the last great geological revolution by an universal and transient inundation which has effected the planet we inhabit."-Reliquæ Diluvianæ, p. 163.