able, parts of the latter were elevated some inches above the surface of the mud and its calcareous crust; and the upper ends of the bones thus projecting, like the legs of pigeons through a pie crust, into the void space above, have become thinly covered with calcareous drippings, whilst their lower extremities have no such incrustation, and have simply adhering to them the mud in which they have been imbedded.

The effect of the loam and stalagmite in preserving the bones from decomposition, by protecting them from all access of atmospheric air, has been very remarkable.

The workmen, in first discovering the bones at Kirkdale, supposed them to have belonged to cattle that died by a murrain in this district a few years ago, and they were for some time neglected, and thrown on the roads with the common limestone; they were, at length, noticed by Mr. Harrison, a medical gentleman in the neighbourhood, and have since been collected and deposited in various private and public museums. The teeth and bones which have been discovered in this cave appear to have belonged to the hyæna, tiger, bear, wolf, fox, weasel, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, deer, hare, rabbit, water-rat, mouse, raven, pigeon, lark, snipe, and a small species of duck.

The bottom of the cave on first removing the mud, was found to be strewed all over like a dog-kennel, from one end to the other, with hundreds of teeth and bones, or rather broken and splintered fragments of bones, of all the animals above enumerated; scarcely a single bone has escaped fracture, with the exception of some of the more solid and hard bones of the foot; on some of these

bones, marks may be traced, which, on applying one to the other, appear exactly to fit the form of the canine teeth of the hyæna that occur in the cave. The hyæna's bones have been broken, and apparently gnawed equally with those of the other animals. Heaps of small splinters, and highly comminuted, yet angular fragments of bone, mixed with teeth of all the varieties of animals above enumerated, lay in the bottom of the den, occasionally adhering together by calcareous cement. Not one skull is to be found entire; and it is so rare to find a large bone of any kind that has not been more or less broken, that there is no hope of obtaining materials for the construction of a single limb, and still less of an entire skeleton. The jaw-bones, also, even of the hyænas, are broken to pieces like the rest.

It must already appear probable, from the facts above described, particularly from the comminuted and gnawed condition of the bones, that the cave at Kirkdale was, during a long succession of years, inhabited as a den by hyænas, and that they dragged into its recesses the other animals, whose remains are found indiscriminately mixed with their own; an hypothesis which is certainly strengthened by Dr. Buckland having found the excrement of the animal in the same cave. Should it be asked why we do not find, at least, the entire skeleton of the one or more hyænas that died last and left no survivors to devour them; we find a sufficient reply to this question, in the circumstance of the probable destruction of the last individuals by the waters of the deluge. On the rise of these, had there been any hyænas in the den, they would have rushed out, and fled for safety to the hills; and if

absent, they could not by any possibility have returned to it from the higher levels; that they were extirpated by the catastrophe is obvious, from the discovery of their bones in the diluvial gravel both of England and Germany.

The accumulation of these bones, then, appears to have been a process of years, whilst all the animals in question were natives of this country. The general dispersion of bones of the same animals through the diluvian gravel of high latitudes, over a great part of the northern hemisphere, shows that the period in which they inhabited these regions was that immediately preceding the formation of this gravel, and that they perished by the same waters which produced it. M. Cuvier has, moreover, ascertained that the fossil elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and hyæna, belong to species now unknown; and as there is no evidence that they have at any time, subsequent to the formation of the diluvium, existed in these regions, we may conclude that the period, at which the bones of these extinct species were introduced into the cave at Kirkdale was before the deluge.

Thus the phenomena of this cave seems referable to a period immediately antecedent to the general deluge, and in which the world was inhabited by land animals, almost all bearing a generic, and many a specific resemblance to those which now exist; but so completely has the violence of that tremendous convulsion destroyed and remodelled the form of the antediluvian surface, that it is only in caverns that have been protected from its ravages, that we may hope to find undisturbed evidence of events

in the period immediately preceding it. The bones already described, and the calcareous matter formed bebefore the introduction of the diluvial mud, are what Dr. Buckland considers to be the products of the period in question. It was indeed probable, before the discovery of this cave, from the abundance in which the remains of similar species occur in superficial gravel beds, which cannot be referred to any other than a diluvial origin, that such animals were the antediluvian inhabitants not only of this country, but generally of all those northern latitudes in which their remains are found (but the proof was imperfect, as it was possible they might have been drifted or floated hither by the waters from the warmer regions of the earth), but the facts developed in this charnel-house of the antediluvian forests of Yorkshire, demonstrate that there was a long succession of years, in which the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, had been the prey of the hyænas, which, like themselves, inhabited England in the period immediately preceding the formation of the diluvial gravel. Having thus far described the principal facts to be observed in the interior of this cave, Dr. Buckland proceeds to point out the chronological inferences that may be derived from the state of the bones, and of the mud and stalagmite that accompany them, and to extract the following detail of events that have been going on successively within this curious cave:

First, There appears to have been a period (and, if we may form an estimate from the small quantity of stalagmite now found on the actual floor of the cave, a very short one), during which this aperture in the rock ex

isted in its present state, but was not tenanted by the hyænas.

The second period was that during which the cave was inhabited by the hyænas, and the stalactyte and stalagmyte were still forming.

The third period is that at which the mud was introduced and the animals extirpated, viz. the period of the deluge. It has been already stated, that there is not any alternation of this mud with beds of bone or of stalagmite, such as would have occurred had it been produced by land floods often repeated; once, and once only, it appears to have been introduced; and we may consider its vehicle to have been the turbid waters of the same inundation that produced universally the diluvial gravel.

The fourth period is that during which the stalagmite was deposited which invests the upper surface of the mud.

We have attempted, in this note, to give a slight sketch of the history of this curious cavern, and of the important inferences to be deduced from its phenomena; rather with the hope of inducing the reader to peruse the interesting volume of Dr. Buckland, from which these extracts have been made, than of affording a full and satisfactory account of a discovery which has, at once, redeemed geology from the charge of fabricating theories inconsistent with divine revelation.

NOTE 14. p. 224.

Rifle guns are those whose barrels, instead of being smooth on the inside, like our common pieces, are formed with a number of spiral channels, resembling screws;