Wintering at Menton on the Riviera (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1872 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV. THE BONE CAVES OF THE ROCHES ROUGES: THE TROGLODYTES. FOR those who find pleasure in scientific observation, this district, with its mountain chains, affords a very varied and extensive field of geological research, within a narrow area. The general formation of the locality is limestone, stratified and unstratified, sometimes rich in nummulites and other fossils. This cretaceous stratum composes the higher as well as lower ranges, which at an interval of a few miles east and west of the Menton basin is flanked by a species of plum-pudding, or conglomerate, that shows in hilly masses at those points where the lessei Alpine spurs forming the amphitheatre break boldly on the coast. Nearly midway and close to the shore, in a terminal buttress of this unstratified bed, are situate the Bone Caves of these Roches Rouges, or red rocks. This is no misnomer. The traces of iron seem to be unusually abundant in the limestone here. From the action of the atmosphere together with other causes the reddish colour it assumes is remarkable at great distances both by land and sea. These caves or grottoes are five in all, and serve to illustrate, though on a much smaller scale, the natural cavities generally, from the great Mammoth Cave in Kentucky to the Devil's Hole in Derbyshire. It is many years since these caverns began to attract attention, and to M. Antoine Grand, of Lyons, the credit is due of having first introduced them to the notice of the scientific. In 1858 M. Forel, a Swiss geologist of note, examined several of them with care and zeal. This gentleman in 1860 published an elaborate memoir of his investigations, his industry having been rewarded with the happiest results. S. Moggridge, an Englishman who regularly winters at...