These animals attack each other during their life; for the fossil head of a hyena is preserved, which had evidently been wounded and afterwards healed[437]. This supposition is moreover confirmed by the animal nature of the earth in which these bones are found[438]. This much is certain, that the establishment of these animals in the caves has taken place at a much later epoch than that at which the great rocky strata have been formed, not only those which compose the mountains in which the caves are situated, but the strata of much newer origin. No permanent inundation has penetrated into the subterranean dens, and formed a regular rocky deposit. The mud arising from the proper decomposition of these animals, and the stalactites that have been filtered through the wall of the caves, are the only matters which cover these remains, and these stalactites increase so rapidly, that M. Goldfuss already found a layer of them covering the names of MM. Esper and Rosenmüller, whose visits did not date thirty years before his own. The rolled stones that are met with, and the marks of detrition observed on some bones, announce, at the very utmost, but passing currents. But how have so many ferocious animals which peopled our forests been extirpated? All the reply we can make is, that they must have been destroyed at the same time, and by the same cause, as the large herbivora, which, like them, also peopled these forests, and of which no traces remain at the present day any more than of them. ACCOUNT OF THE CAVE CONTAINING BONES AT ADELSBERG IN CARNIOLA. The following interesting account of the cave, slightly noticed at pages 524 and 525, is extracted from a memoir by M. Bertrand Geslin, Member of the Natural History Society of Paris, published in the number of the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_ for April 1826. M. Cuvier, says Gesler, speaking of the Adelsberg Cave, from the account published by M. Volpi of Trieste, says, that it was nearly two leagues from the entrance where he discovered bones of animals. Having visited this cave myself, I am obliged to say that M. Volpi’s assertion as to this matter is not very correct. On my way to Trieste, in July 1823, before going to Adelsberg, I had the advantage of seeing M. Volpi. In shewing me the bones collected by him at Adelsberg, he also assured me that they were found two leagues from the entrance of the cave, and only in a very compact block of several cubic feet, from which it was not possible to procure more, as he had taken all that he could easily remove.