The most productive ossiferous cavern in Britain is that of Kirkdale, 25 m. from York, in which the remains of about 300 hyenas have been detected, besides innumer able gnawed bones of those animals on which they preyed. The carboniferous limestones of Glamorganshire abound in caves, which have been explored by Buckland, and more recently and thoroughly by Dr. Falconer. At the meeting of the geological society in June, 1860, Dr. Falconer thus describes the contents of one of them, called Bacon hole. On the limestone floor of the cave are—(1.) a few inches of marine sand, abound ing with litorina rudis, L. litoralis, and dausilia nigricam, with bones of an arricola and birds; (2.) a thin layer of stalagmite: (3.) two feet of blackish sand, containing a mass of bones of elephas untiquus, with remains of metes tart's and putorius ; (4.) two feet of ochreous earth, limestone breccia, and sandy layers, with remains of elephas antiques, rhinoceros hemitcechus, hycena, canis lupus, ursus spelaus, bos, and cercus; (5.) irregular stalagmite; (G.) two feet of limestone breccia and stalagmite, with bones of 111'8116 and bas; (7.) a foot or so of irregular stalagmite, with ursus; and (8.) dark-colored superficial
earth, kept sloppy by abundant drip, with bones of bos, cerrus, canis eulpes, horns of reindeer and roebuck, together with shells of patella, mytilus, purpura, and lumina (probably brought into the cavern as food by birds), and also pieces of ancient British pottery. After a review of the fauna of the bone caves of this country and of Europe, Dr. Falconer concludes that the caves of Glamorganshire have probably been filled up with their mammalian remains since the deposition of the boulder-clay, and that there exist no mammalian remains in the ossiferous caves of England and Wales referable to a fauna of a more ancient geological date. See KENT'S CAVERN.
Ossiferous C. occur in all parts of the globe. The fossils of those in Australia show that the fauna of the Pleistocene period bad a remarkable resemblance to that of the present day. The remains consist chiefly of kangaroos and allied genera of marsupials.