L E T T E R X X V .
Remarkable depofitory o f fojjil bones, feen near the village o f Concuct,
in Aragon.
THE village o f Concud is about a league difiant from
the city of Teruel, in the kingdom of Aragon,
fituated on a hill of calcareous rock, degenerated into;
hard earth; and though it now appears very uneven, it
fqems to have been formerly rock which the rains have:
deftroyed by degrees, in proportion to its greater or lefs
refiiiance. Going out o f the. village of Concud, towards
the North, you afcend three fmall hills, and then;
come to the Cueba Rubia, “ The Red Cave,” fo called'
from a fpecies of red earth, which the waters of a gully
have laid open. This hill is about two hundred paces
long, thirty broad, and eighty in depth. The top of
the hill is o f calcareous, rock, more or lefs hard, in;
itrata, of two or three feet breadth, full o f terreilriaL
and aquatic ihells, which appear to be. calcined. In
the centre of the fame rocks, there are bones of oxen
and horfes, aifes teeth, and'other bones of leifer domef-
tic animals. Many of thefe bones feem preferved in
the fame itate as thofe found in cemeteries ; others feem
calcined;..
calcined; feme are folid ; and other forts are pulverized.
The thigh and ihirt bones of the human race ate
feen with their cavities full o f a Cryflalline matter^ The
horns of cattle are miked with thefe, and other bones o f
different articulations, white, yellow, and black, con-
fufedly jumbled together, in fome places there being
feven or eight fhin bones of men, without the leaft regularity
or order.
Thefe bones are generally found in a bed o f rock about
three feet thick, decompofed, and almoft converted into
earth, with a flrata of fuperincumbent hone, from fifteen
to' twenty feet thick, which ferveS as a cover to
the hill, the bed which contains the bones, refls upon
a mafs of red earth, and rounded limefione eonglu-
tinated with fand not unlike pudding-ftone. A fimilar
congeries is feen at the bottom o f the gully, and the
adjacent hills are o f plafler-flone. On the other fide
o f the gully, and near it, there is a cave blackened
by the fires of fhepherds, where there are bones,
in a bed of hard earth, above fixty feet high, covered
with different flrata of rock, correfponding exactly with
thofe on the other fide ; which fhews that, what may
have been carried away by the waters, was exa&ly the:
fame as the mafs that remains. The chain o f hills
at this place, five leagues from Abbarracin, and eight
from the fource o f the Tagus, produces the thorny
F f reft