Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1875 — European Bone Caves. [ARTICLE]

European Bone Caves.

The osseou? remains of European bone caves are chiefly those of bears aud hyenas, intermingled with the bones of wolves, foxes, gluttons, horses, oxeu, stags, mammoths and other extinct or still mammals. From the great preponderance of the bones of carnivores it has been suggested that the caves served formerly to those animals of prey as dens, into which they introduced their victims, torn or entire, to feed their young; and there is ample evidence that this was the case to some extent. Hyenas evidently have inhabited certain caves and rearea their young in them. Bears likewise retire to caves, chiefly during hibernation, but, according to Vogt, are not in the habit of introducing bones. Yet such occupations of the caves by bears and hyenas, even through many generations, cannot account for the astonishing number of bones found in some of them. In the cave of Gailenreuth, in Bavaria, were discovered within ninety years the remains of at least 800 cave-bears; and from the amount of bone earth in another Bavarian cave Dr. Buckland has calculated that 5,500 animals of .the same species were there entombed. Large collections of bones, moreover, are found in caves with entrances so high that no living animals could have had access to them. The rolled stones, finally, which, as we have mentioned, often underlie the bone earth or are mingled with it, certainly were not brought to their plactes by wild beasts. It must be assumed, therefore, that the bone caves owe their deposits in a great measure to the agency of water. The surface of Europe, as we have shown, was subject to great changes at those remote periods when the now lost animals were still in existence, and we have alluded to the causes by which floods, more or less extensive, were ,produced. When the then higher levels of the water-courses and their increased swiftness are taken into consideration, it would seem to require no great stretch of fancy for imagining in what manner pebbles, mud, shells and bones, fresh as well as decayed, were introduced into the caves, even into such as are now found high above the bottoms of vallevs. In some caves containing no pebbles the mud may have been gradually deposited by the melting snow. Caves, doubtless, were the first dwelling-places of primitive man. They afforded him protection against the % inclemency of the weather, against the attacks of wild beasts and of enemies of bis own race. Occasionally he also deposited there his dead. Hence the human remains found in bone caves may be, in a number of cases at least, relics left by the former occupants. Some, however, believe that human bones and tools were mostly washed into the caves, like the animal' remains and other materials there deposited.—“77l' Stone Age in Europeby Charla Bau, in Harper's Magazine. —The Dorchester (Md.) Neict says the ovster trade is extremely brisk in the Neck district. In or near the mouth of the Coptank River from fifty to sixty boats are scooping and dredging daily. It is estimated that there are a million bushels of oysters on these shoals or rocks as they are called, but the oysters are so thick that they are inferior and only fit for steaming or planting. —A lady in Uniontown, Pa., has a meat dish which has stood the racket for 200 years. For an excellent reason! neither that lady nor her ancestors have kept any hired help. Dishes, to withstand e assaults of these latter, must be made of cast iron. —