Observationes microscopicae de ratione, qua nervus cochleae mammalium terminatur : dissertatio inauguralis ... / auctor Arthur Boettcher.

Boettcher, Arthur, 1831-1889.

Date:: 1856

Credit: Observationes microscopicae de ratione, qua nervus cochleae mammalium terminatur : dissertatio inauguralis ... / auctor Arthur Boettcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$at seven hundred and fifty feet, and the circumference upwards of three thousand feet. The roof is supported by numerous regular pillars hewn out of the solid limestone rock. The floor from the entrance to the termination forms an inclined plann, the descent of which is in some places very rapid. About 100 feet from the entrance a very deep and prccipitous pit was dis- covered containing a human skeleton ; supposed to be that of some unfortu- nate who had fallen hoadlong down and broken his neck, or rather his skull, judging from the fracture which it exhibits. The bones, of almost giant pro- portions, gave evidence, from their decayed state, of having remained in tliat position for many years. The skull, unlike the rest of the skeleton, 'was in a remarkable state of preservation. Numerous orosses on the wall indicate that the devout Pilgrim or Crusader had been there ; and a few Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions—too much effaced to be deciphered—prove that the place was not unknown to the Jew and the Arab. The explorers found many intricate, meandering passages leading to immense halls as white as the driven snow, and supported by colossal pillars of irregular shape ; some of them placed there by the hand. of nature, others of them evidently by the stone quarriers to prevent the intumbling of the city. From their explorations the party con- cluded that this cavern and the Grrotto of Jeremiah, two or three hundred yards distant, originally constituted one immense cave which was formerly the great quarry of Jerusalem. The cave appears, therefore, to he a very old one. An allusion to it under the name of the Cotton Grrotto is made by Kadi Mejr-ed-din in an Arabic MS., entitled The Sublime Companion to the History of Jerusalem and Hebron, and bearing date, A. D. 1495. A gentleman who entered the cave subse- quently to the visit of the Messrs. Barclay, tells us, in the Boston Traveller, that though its existence was long suspected, '' nothing was positively known regarding it, as it has been kept carefully closed by the successive governors of Jerusalem. The mouth of the cavern was probably walled up as early as the times of the crusades, to prevent its falling into the hands of a besieging army; earth was thrown up against this wall, so as effectually to conceal it from view, and it is only upon the closest scrutiny that the present entranae can be perceived. Piles of stone chippings, and blocks of stone but half- quarried, and still attached by one side to the rock, were encountered in dif- ferent parts of the cave. The marks of the cutting instruments were as plain and well-defined as if the workman had but just ceased from his labor. Those who visited the cave were of the opinion that it had been worked as a quarry during the days of Solomon. The following reasons appear to favor this opinion. The stone is the same as that of the portions of the Temple wall still remaining, and referred by Dr. Robinson to the period of the first build- ing. From the former entrance of the cave to the Temple area is a gently in- clined plane—a fact that suggests a satisfactory solution of what has hereto- fore been regarded as a very puzzling question—the difficulty of placing in their present situation, such immense masses of rock as those found at the south-east and south-west corners of the Temple wall. The heaps of chippings which lie about show that the stone was dressed on the spot, which accords with the account of the building of the Temple. To these reasons we may also add the extent of the quarry, the amount of stone which must have been worked out there, the size of some of the blocks themselves, the extreme age of the part which has been exposed to the action of the elements, and which dates hack in legends and traditions to the time of Jeremiah, the fact that there are no other quar- ries of any great size near the city, and especially the fact that in the reign of Solomon this quarry, in its whole extent, was without the limits of the city. In the absence of any positive evidence to be derived from the skull itself, these statements are introduced here as heing calculated to throw somo light upon the question of its antiquity or modernness, and consequently, to a certain' extent, its nationality. 1859.]$