Part 65

I am well aware of the occasional existence of holes in the ribs, a few instances of which I have seen in the human subject: but they differ essentially in character from the opening here described, as they occupy the centre of the rib, mostly in its sternal extremity, and have their margin depressed on both sides.

In A. W. Schlegel’s Contributions to the History of the Elephant, in the Indische Bibliothek, i. 2, are enumerated many facts not generally known regarding the African and Asiatic Elephants, and the details are accompanied with interesting inferences.

According to Schleiermacher, Goldfuss and Von Bachr, fossil tusks, resembling those of the African Elephant, have been found in some districts. Cuvier, however, questions their being in a true fossil state.

This plate forms the frontispiece to the present work.

Sœmmering über die fossilien Knocken, welche in der Protogæa Von Leibnitz abgebildet sind: eine Abhandlung in der Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen von C. Grosse, iii. 1790, s. 73.

Rosenmüller, Beschreib. des Höhlenbären, s. 2.

Further information in regard to these caves will be found in Leonhard Taschenb. der Min. vii. 2. S. 439; and in Nöggerath’s Gebirge in Rheinland-Westphalen, ii. S. 27. and iii. 1. 13.

In England and Wales the following caves have been found to contain fossil bones:

1. Cave in Duncombe Park, not far from that of Kirkdale. It contains only recent bones.

2. Cave of Hutton, a village in Somersetshire, at the foot of the Mendip Hills. Bones of elephants, horses, hogs, of two species of deer, of oxen, the nearly entire skeleton of a fox, and the metacarpal bone of a large bear, have been found in it.

3. Cave of Derdham Down, near to Clifton, to the westward of Bristol. Bones of horses were found in it.

4. Cave of Balleye, near to Warksworth, in Derbyshire. In 1663, teeth of elephants, some of which are still preserved, were found in it.

5. Cave of Dream, at the village of Callow, near to Warksworth. It was discovered in the year 1822, by some miners in search of lead-ore. Nearly all the bones of a rhinoceros, in a good state of preservation, were found enclosed in a bed of mud in this cave.

6. Fissures and caves at Oreston. These are in transition limestone. Bones of the rhinoceros, hyæna, tiger, wolf, deer, ox, and horse, have been found in them.

7. Cave of Nicholaston, near the coast of Glamorgan, in the Bay of Oxwich. In the year 1792, bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, deer, and hyæna, were found in it.

8. Caves of Paveland, in the county of Glamorgan, between the Bay of Oxwich and Cape Worms, at the entrance of the English Channel. There are two openings in a cliff thirty or forty feet above the level of the sea, which we cannot reach but at low water. The clergyman and the surgeon of the neighbouring village of Portinan found in them a tusk and grinder of an elephant; afterwards other bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, bear, hyæna, fox, wolf, ox, deer, rat, of birds, the skeleton of a woman, and splinters of bones, were also found. But many of these bones are modern; and the diggings made at remote and unknown periods have displaced the ancient bones, and mixed them with the modern, and also with shells of the present sea.

Professor Goldfuss, in the 11th volume of the Nova Acta Physico-medica Academiæ Cæsareæ Leopoldino-Carolinæ Naturæ Curiosorum, published in 1823, gives an account of the fossil bones he met with in the caves of Westphalia and Franconia. Speaking of the Cave of Gaylenreuth, he says, that Esper has the following remarks on the quantity of bones taken from these caves:

On first examination, there were collected, in a very short time, in the dust of the floors of these caves, upwards of 200 different teeth; and we may assume that, by the end of the year 1774, some thousands were collected. It is difficult to form a conception of the number of these zoolithes, and of the earth in which they are contained; and I do not hesitate in believing, that, at the lowest estimate, several hundred waggons load would not remove the whole. The animal earth, with intermingled bones, was, in many places, eight or ten feet deep. Esper calculated that, in his time, 180 skulls had been taken out of the loose animal earth, the conglomerate not having been broken up for this purpose. Of late years, the conglomerate afforded, in the space of three years, 150 skulls; and we may estimate that twice as many more were destroyed in breaking them out of the hard stalactitic matter. If we add to this the pieces of skulls which occur in this repository, more frequently than perfect skulls, we may estimate that more than a thousand individuals lie buried here.

These bones occur now, as formerly, irregularly dispersed; that is, teeth, cylindrical bones, cranial bones, and vertebræ of different species, and of different individuals of different ages, and of various sizes, occur conglutinated together. We never find the under jaw of the same skull near to it, and rarely the two separated portions of the same lower jaw together; the skulls occurring all in the deeper places: and Esper found the teeth forming a bed by themselves. The bones still possess their sharper edges, and are neither rubbed nor gnawed.

If we assume a thousand buried individuals, the proportion of the different species will be, according to Dr Goldfuss, as follows:

1. Hyæna spelæa, 25 2. Canis spelæus, 50 3. Felis spelæa, 25 4. Gulo spelæus, 30 5. Ursus priscus, 10 6. Ursus arctoideus, 60 7. Ursus spelæus, 800

The bones of small animals, mentioned by Esper, are now no longer met with; and, in the collections of Esper and Frischmann, Dr Goldfuss saw only a few dozen of the glutton (Gulo.) The contents of a peculiar conglomerate described by Esper, cannot now be determined. It consisted of a confused assemblage of very small bones, the fracture surfaces of which were fibrous, and contained also the thigh-bone and rib of a bird, which were conjectured to equal in size those of the eagle; hence Esper inferred that the mass was made up of the remains of reptile and fish bones.

No remains have hitherto been found in these caves; but in former times we are told that teeth of the elephant were found in the Zahnloch, and a vertebra, supposed, of a rhinoceros, in the Schneiderloch. The bones of domestic animals, such as deer, roes, foxes, and badgers, frequently found in the caves, shew, at a glance, that they have come into their present situation accidentally, at a modern period.

The cave at Mockas formerly contained in its deepest fissures, teeth and fragments of bones of bears, associated with rolled stones, and enveloped in earthy marl. The entrance to this cave is situated on the acclivity of a hill. Goldfuss ascended to the entrance of it by means of a rope, and found in its interior many narrow, wide extended hollows, which are generally so confined that we can only visit them by creeping. Here and there there are small widenings, and frequently narrow outlets occur in the roof.

The Zahnloch and the Schneiderloch, which also contain single bones of bears, are small vaults, with wide openings, into which we can penetrate without difficulty.

The fact mentioned in the text brings to our recollection an interesting Memoir of Professor Walther, entitled, “On the Antiquity of diseases in Bones,” printed in Grasse and Walther’s Journal der Chirurgie und Augenheil Kunde, viii. From eleven specimens of bones of cave-bears found in the Caves of Sundwich, described by Walther, a proof is obtained, that the common forms of osseous diseases occur in them, just as they are observed at present in the human species, viz. necrosis, anchylosis, caries, exostosis, formation of new bony matter, thickening, thinning, and arthritic properties of diseased bones. Most of those diseases are such as would result from violent injuries, and the consequent very tedious organo-vital reaction. Such mechanical injuries would give rise to necrosis, caries, exostosis, &c. We can easily conceive, says Walther, how that the rapacious animals of a former world may have been exposed to violent mechanical injuries of their bodies, and of single parts of them. It is worthy of remark, that most of the diseased bones are of the lower jaw, the alveolar processes of it and the walls of single alveolæ. During the combats of the cave bears for their prey amongst themselves, or with other gigantic animals, the jaws and teeth must have experienced the greatest mechanical injuries. The necroses of the humeral bones are such as might result from a bruising of the bones, and the caries of the upper surface of the bodies of the lumbar vertebræ, may have been occasioned by external violence. Walther is also of opinion, that the cave-bears suffered from diseases of the bones not referrible to mechanical injuries. He remarks of a radius and a vertebra, whose arthritic condition he carefully describes, “These bones have experienced pathological changes, which could only arise from a long continued diseased condition of the nutritive process. They are very light, have an extremely thin crust, the greater part of their mass is of a spongy, very porous substance, and are uncommonly fragile. Such a change could not be produced by any external mechanical injury, nor by any slight action of the weather; but must proceed from a tedious constitutional disease, connected with a total change of the organo-forming plastic activity, and proceeding from a peculiar dyscrasia.” Hence it is probable, these cave-bears even suffered from gout, scrophula, and other similar diseases.

According to Laugier, in 100 parts of the earth in which the bones in the caves of Gaylenreuth are imbedded, he found the following proportional quantity of constituent parts:

1. Lime, with a little magnesia, in the state of carbonate, 32.0 2. Carbonic acid and moisture, 24.0 3. Phosphate of lime, 21.5 4. Animal matter and water, 10.0 5. Alumina slightly coloured with manganese, 4.0 6. Silica coloured with iron, 4.0 7. Oxide of iron, probably combined with phosphoric acid, 3.5 8. Loss, 1.0 ----- 100.0