I continued to dig as I advanced, and everywhere found bones more or less broken and enveloped in the clayey mud. After proceeding for half an hour, I fell in with a mass, in an apartment of considerable dimensions, which was of a conical form, and composed of blocks of compact white limestone, of all sizes, mixed with yellowish clayey mud. These blocks had their edges as sharp as if they had only been lately broken. The mass, which reached to the right wall of the cave, might be fifteen feet in height, and twenty in diameter at its base: it was covered with stalactite in several places. It was in this mass, at about ten feet above the floor of the cave, in the clayey mud that filled up the interstices between the blocks, that I found the entire skeleton of a young bear, in a space of two square feet at most. The bones which I dug out were the frontal part of the head, the lower jaw of the left side, the seventh cervical and eighth dorsal vertebræ; the eighth and fourteenth ribs of the right side; two tibia, femora, and cubiti, and two large canine teeth of another bear. If I could have raised up the limestone blocks, between which these bones lay, I might without doubt have procured a great part of this skeleton. There are still found here and there in the cave some small heaps of clayey mud, with fragments of white secondary limestone, as well as large isolated limestone blocks, which the guides are daily destroying, to make the floor even for the convenience of visitors. I had only advanced an hour and a quarter’s progress into the cave, always finding bones, when the oil of my lamps beginning to fail, I was obliged to return without reaching the block in which M. Volpi had found the first bones. This block is without doubt owing to the same causes as the heap of which I have spoken above. The manner in which these heaps exist, being composed of blocks of compact white secondary limestone, similar to that which forms the walls of the cave, with sharp edges, and piled upon each other, made me imagine that they might have fallen from the roof. As I returned, I examined the ceiling of the vaults with attention. As it was all covered over with stalactites, I could not discover any fissure. From this short excursion in the Adelsberg cave, I am induced to believe, that the bones exist along the whole extent of the cave, and that they occur in two different ways; _1st_, scattered in the clayey mud which forms the floor of the chambers; and, _2dly_, buried in heaps formed of blocks of white secondary compact limestone, and yellow clayey mud. The hypothesis which M. Cuvier admits as the most probable for explaining the presence of these bones in the caves, is that which would make these caves to have served as a retreat to carnivorous animals.