Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

However, the chief of all these astonishing caves, those of Gaylenreuth, are beyond the limits of this peninsula, being on the left bank of the Wiesent, to the north-west of the village from which it derives its name. The entrance is perforated in a vertical rock; it is 7½ feet high, and faces the east. The first cave turns to the right, and is upwards of 80 feet long. The unequal heights of the vault divide it into four parts; the first three are from 15 to 20 feet high, the fourth is only 4 or 5. At the bottom of this latter, on the level of the floor, there is a hole 2 feet high, which affords a passage to the second cave: it has first a direction to the south, over a length of 60 feet by 40 in breadth, and 18 in height; it then turns to the west for 70 feet, becoming lower and lower until at length the height is only 5 feet. The passage which leads to the third cave is very inconvenient, and one has to turn through various corridors: it is 30 feet across, and from 5 to 6 in height. The ground in it is kneaded with teeth and jaws. Near the entrance is a pit of from 15 to 20 feet, to which one descends by a ladder. After having descended, we come to a vault of 15 feet diameter by 30 in height; and towards the side at which the descent is made there is a cave strewed with bones. On still descending a little, a new arcade is met with, which leads to a cave 40 feet long, and a new pit of from 18 to 20 feet deep. After descending this, we reach a cavern about 40 feet high, all strewed with bones. A passage, of 5 feet by 7, leads to a grotto of 25 feet in length by 12 in breadth. Canals, 20 feet in length, conduct to another grotto of 20 feet in height. Lastly, there is another cave, 83 feet broad and 24 high, in which more bones are found than in any of the others.

The sixth cave, which is the last, has a northerly direction, so that the whole series of caves and passages nearly describes a semicircle.

A fissure in the third cave led to the discovery, in 1784, of a new cave, 15 feet long and 4 broad, in which the greatest quantities of hyena and lions’ bones were found. The aperture was much too small for these animals to have passed through it. A particular canal which ended in this small cave has afforded an incredible number of bones and large skulls entire.

In the Philosophical Transactions of 1822, pl. xxvi. there may be seen a profile of this cave, taken on the spot in 1816, by Professor Buckland, in which is to be especially remarked an enormous mass, entirely composed of bones enveloped in the stalactite, and thus forming an osseous breccia, but of quite a different nature from those which occur at Gibraltar and other places[432].

The cave of Gaylenreuth is one of those the bones of which are most completely known, by the researches which have been made or caused to be made in it for a long time back by distinguished naturalists, such as MM. Esper, de Humboldt, Ebel of Bremen, Rosenmüller, Sœmmering, Goldfuss, &c., and by the numerous and rich collections which these researches have produced. According to the examination which Cuvier has made of the principal of these collections, three-fourths of the bones found there belong to the Bear genus, and to two or three species of that genus. The others belong to the hyena, tiger, wolf, fox, glutton, and polecat, or some nearly allied species. There are also found, although in much smaller number, bones of herbivorous quadrupeds, and, in particular, deer, of which fragments are in the possession of M. Ebel. It would even appear from a passage of M. Sœmmering’s, that a parcel of bones had been got in it belonging to an elephant’s skull[433]. According to Rosenmüller, there were found in it bones of men, horses, oxen, sheep, deer, roes, mules, badgers, dogs, and foxes, but which from the researches made by him in the cave itself, and from their state of preservation, must have been deposited at periods much later than those of the bear, tigers and hyenas[434].

The small peninsula situate nearly opposite to this cave, presents several other caves, as the Schœnstein, or Beautiful Rock, which contains seven contiguous caverns. The Brunnenstein, or Fountain Rock, in which, according to Esper, there are only found bones of known species, such as badgers, dogs, foxes, hogs, and deer; but Esper had too little anatomical knowledge for his testimony to be entirely relied on with respect to this. These bones are sometimes encrusted with stalactite. It contains also the Holeberg, or Hollow Mountain, in which eight or ten caves form a series of 200 feet in length, with two entrances. Bones of the same bears as at Gaylenreuth, are found here in various lateral depressions; and there are also deer and hogs.—The Wizerloch, so named from an ancient Sclavonic deity formerly worshipped there, the most dismal cavern of the whole country, situate in its most elevated part, and in which some vertebræ have been found. It is more than 200 feet long. The Wunderhœhle, which takes its name from its discoverer, has been known since 1773: its extent is 160 feet.—Lastly, the Cave of Klaustein, consisting of four grottoes, and upwards of 200 feet deep. Bones have been found in the third grotto, and most abundantly towards its extremity. It might be supposed that the name Klaustein signified Claw-rock, and it would thus accord very well with a place where, without doubt, as at Gaylenreuth, a multitude of ungual phalanges of bears and animals of the tiger kind have been found. But M. Goldfuss asserts, that it was called Klaustein, or St Nicholas’s Rock, after a chapel of this name, which formerly stood upon it.—There are still the Geiss-knok, or Goat Cave, and a cave discovered in 1793. M. Rosenmüller found in them two human skeletons already covered with stalactite.

The country which surrounds this small peninsula has itself several caves, independently of that of Gaylenreuth, as those of Mockas, Rabenstein, and Kirch-ahorn, three villages, situate, the first to the south, and the other two to the north-east of Gaylenreuth. Bones were formerly found in the first. The last bears in the country the expressive name of Zahn-loch, or Tooth Cave; it also bears the name of Hohen-mirschfeld, a village on whose ground it is situate; and the country people have long been in the habit of seeking in it those bones, which they imagined to be medicinal. MM. Rosenmüller and Goldfuss have in fact found bear and tiger bones. There are two others in the territory of the same village, of which the one named Schneider-loch (Tailor’s Hole), is said to have furnished the vertebræ of an elephant. That of Zewig, close upon Waschenfeld, at the very edge of the Wiesent, is nearly 80 feet deep; and it is said that skeletons of men and wolves were found in it.

All these hills, containing caves in their interior, and situate so near each other, seem to form a small chain, interrupted only by brooks, and which joins the more elevated chain of the Fichtelberg, in which are the highest mountains of Franconia, and from which flow the Main, the Saale, the Eger, the Naab, and many small rivers. M. Rosenmüller, and after him, others assert, that those which are in the hills to the north of the Wiesent, contain not a single fragment of bone, while those to the south are filled with them.

In 1799, a cave, remarkable for its situation, was discovered, which connects in some measure those of the Hartz with those of Franconia. It is the Cave of Glücksbrun, in the bailiwick of Altenstein, in the territory of Meinungen, on the south-western declivity of the chain of the Thuringerwald (Blumenb. Archæol. Telluris, p. 15. Zach. Monate. Corresp. 1800, January, p. 30.) It is the same which M. Rosenmüller names Libenstein, on account of its being on the road from Altenstein to this latter, which is a bathing place. There is a description of it by M. Kocher, in the Magazin für Mineralogie, by M. C. E. A. De Hof, 1st band. heft. iv. p. 427. The limestone in which it is situate rests upon bituminous schist, and, rising much upwards, comes to rest upon primitive rocks. The limestone varies in hardness and in the nature of its fracture, and contains marine petrifactions, such as pectinites, echinites, &c.

In making a road, there was discovered an opening, from which a very cold air issued, which determined the Duke of Saxe-Meinungen to have it farther examined. A narrow passage, of twenty feet in length, was found, which led to a cave of thirty-five feet, having a breadth of from three to twelve, and a height of from six to twelve, according to the places, and terminated by a large piece of rock, which was removed. The labour of two years discovered and cleared a series of caves connected together, and of which the bottom rose and fell alternately. They terminate in a place where water flows; but various lateral fissures make it probable that there are still several caves which have not been opened, and that they perhaps form a sort of labyrinth.