these facts, is, in what way the numerous fragments of the bones of animals were introduced into this cavern? Did the various animals to which they belonged, enter the cavern of their own accord and die there? But the entrance was not large enough to admit such animals as the Elephant, Rhinoceros, Ox, &c. : nor can we conceive that any circumstances could have collected together so many animals of habits so dissimilar as those whose bones were here discovered. Will it be said that these bones were drifted into this cave by a flood? But the larger animals could not have entered whole; nor can we on such a supposition, account for the fact that the bones are so broken and yet have no appearance of being worn by water. The number of teeth and solid bones of the tarsus and carpus, also, was vastly greater than could have been supplied by the individuals whose other bones were found in the cave and this fact cannot be explained by supposing them to have been drifted thither by the Noachian deluge, or any other flood. The third and only remaining hypothesis " says the author, that occurs to me is, that they (the bones) were dragged in for food by the hyænas, who caught their prey in the immediate vicinity of their den ; and as they could not have dragged it home from any great distance, it follows, that the animals they fed on all lived and died not far from the spot where the remains are found." p. 40. The principal evidence in support of this supposition results from the splintered, comminuted, and apparently gnawed condition of the bones, and the disproportion between those bones too hard to be devoured by any animal, such as the teeth and bones of the tarsus and carpus, and the other bones. The bones of the hyæna were as much fractured as the others, and the number of teeth belonging to quite young hyænas was much too great to have belonged to those individuals that might have died by accident or disease: And thus we are led to the conclusion, that the older animals fed occasionally, in times of scarcity, upon their young. It appears, also, that in general the hyænas' bones belonged either to individuals very young, or very old; the latter having their teeth much worn down by use, while the bones of the other animals appear to have been derived from individuals in the vigor of life, who must therefore have perished by violence: all of which favours the idea that the hyænas, were the occupants of the cave, and the other animals their victims. The marks of teeth were distinctly visible upon the fragments, and on applying to them the teeth of the hyæna, they were found exactly to fit. But why select the hyænas, rather than any of the other animals found in this cave, as its original proprietors and the authors of all the havoc? We answer, the habits of the living animal lead to this conclusion. The three species now in existence, all inhabitants of the torrid zone, are well known in eastern countries as greedy of putrid flesh and bones. They follow armies and enter towns at midnight, seizing upon the living and the dead, and often rob the tomb to satisfy their voracious appetite. Their hatred to the dog has been proverbial; and we find the author of Ecclesiasticus enquiring, "what agreement is there between the hyæna and a dog"? Several commentators are of the opinion that the "valley of Zeboim" (1 Sam. xiii. 18.) should have been translated "the valley of hyænas ;" and the phrase "speckled bird" (Jerem. xii. 9.) should have been " ravenous spotted beast"-that is, the Hyæna. Jerome also, in his commentary on the 13th Chapter of Jeremiah, says concerning the hyæna, "vivit ca-daveribus mortuorum, et de sepulchris solet effodere corpora." Busbequius gives a similar description. of the modern hyæna in Anatolia : "Hyæna regionibus iis satis fre quens; sepulchra suffodit, extrahitque cadavera, portatque ad suam speluncam; juxta quam videre est ingentem cumulum ossium humanorum veterinariorum et reliquorum omne genus animalium." From a note in Mr. Bucklands work, it appears he witnessed a curious experiment upon the living hyæna, lending strong confirmation to his hypothesis. We give it in his own words. al work before us, where it is more particularly described. And though the nature of the subject may excite, and on its first publication in England did excite, the sneers of the clusively proves that the cave at fastidious, it nevertheless most conKirkdale was once a den for living hyænas, and that bones were their food. It is a happy example of the important bearing which some apIparently trivial circumstance may have upon our conclusions in natural history. "Since this paper was first published, have had an opportunity of seeing a Cape Hyæna at Oxford, in the travelling collection of Mr. Wormbell, the keeper of which confirmed in every particular, the evidence given to Dr. Wollaston by the keeper at Exeter Change. I was enabled also to observe the animal's mode of proceeding in the destruction of bones; the shin bone of an ox being presented to this hyæna, he began to bite off with his molar teeth large fragments from its upper extremity, and swallowed them whole as fast as they were broken off. On his reaching the medullary cavity, the bone split into angular fragments, many of which he caught up greedily and swallowed entire: he went on cracking it till he had extracted all the marrow, licking out the lowest portion of it with his tongue: this done he left untouched the lower condyle, which contains no marrow and is very hard. The state and form of the residuary fragments are precisely like those of similar bones at Kirkdale; the marks of teeth on it are very few, as the bone usually gave off a splinter before the large conical teeth had forced a hole through it; these few, however, entirely resemble the impressions we find on the bones at Kirkdale; the small splinters in form and size, and manner of fracture, are not distinguishable from the fossil ones. I preserved all the fragments and the gnawed portions of this bone, for the sake of comparison by the side of those I have from the antediluvian den in Yorkshire : there is absolutely no difference between them except in point of age. The animal left untouched the solid bones of the tarsus and carpus, and such parts ofthe cylindrical bones, as we find untouched at Kirkdale, and devoured only the parts analogous to those which are there deficient. The keeper pursuing this experiment to itsfinal result; presented me the next morning with a large quantity of album graecum, disposed in balls that agree entirely in size, shape, and substance with those that were found in the den at Kirkdale." p. 37. The mention of this last fact, leads us to revert to an earlier part of the Vol. VI. No. 8. 54 "It must already appear probable, from the facts above described, particularly from the comminuted state, and apparently gnawed condition of the bones, that the cave at Kirkdale, was, during a long succession of years, inhabited as a den of hyænas, and that they dragged into its recesses the other animal bodies, whose remains are mixed indiscriminately with their own; this conjecture is rendered almost certain by the discovery I made, of many small balls of the solid calcareous excrement of an animal that had fed on bones, resembling the substance known in Album Græcum; its external form is that the old Materia Medica, by the name of of a sphere, irregularly compressed, as in the fæces of sheep, and varying from half an inch, to an inch and and half in diameter. It was at first sight recognized by the keeper of the Menagerie at Exeter Change, as resembling both in form and appearance, the fæces of the spotted or Cape hyæna, which he stated to be greedy of bones beyond all other beasts under his care."-p. 19. The facts concerning the wear and polish of some of the bones found in the cave at Kirkdale, confirm the supposition that it was once the habitation of living byænas. They were worn only on one side, and on that side which must have lain uppermost if subject to the tread of animals, viz. the convex side. the hyæna's jaws were thus worn Some of away one third of their thickness, while the other side was uninjured, and retained its enamel in perfection. If exposed to the action of the water, these bones would have been worn on more than one side, certainly not uniformly on the same side, and therefore it must have been the effect of a repeated passage over them, of the living animal. Stones in the tiger's den in India have been found thus worn down and polished, as are the marble steps, altars, and metallic statues, of temples resorted to by numerous devotees. As the entrance of this cave was low, and stalactites were constantly forming above, it might be expected, if it were the den of living hyænas, that they would by their ingress and egress, break off some of these stalactites. Accordingly some were found thus detached and covered by the stalagmite beneath. These facts with others of less importance, exhibited in Mr. Buckland's work, furnish altogether a body of evidence as complete and conclusive as the case admits, of the position that the Kirkdale cave was for a long season a den of living byænas. If any of our readers feel much doubt on this point, we are sure they could not, after examining the full and lucid exhibition of the evidence in the pages and plates of Mr. Buckland's work. It occurs as another interesting inquiry, whether any facts in the case point us to the period when the hyæna, rhinoceros and elephant roamed in the forests of Yorkshire, and the bones of the latter were dragged by the former into these antediluvian catacombs ? In answering this inquiry, it must needs be stated first, that the principal animals found at Kirkdale, cerfainly the byæna, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, belong to species at present unknown, and which do not now exist on earth; as bas been satisfactorily shown by that most able comparative anatomist M. Cuvier. Secondly, the species of these animals found in this cave, agree exactly with those found all over the world in diluvial mud and gravel, of whose existence there is no evidence since that universal deluge by which this mud and gravel were deposited, and whose entire extinction we have a right, therefore, to impute to that catastrophe. For it is alone in diluvium that the bones of these extinct species are found. Thirdly, the phenomena at the cave exhibit evidence of one and only one flood of waters, there being within it, one and And the only one deposite of mud. same fact appears strikingly obvious at numerous other caves in England and on the continent of Europe, which the author visited, making in some instances due allowances for local peculiarities. Fourthly, the situation of the Kirkdale cavern is such as to forbid the supposition that this mud was introduced by a land flood. It is elevated about eighty feet above a small stream that falls into the vale of Pickering and therefore above the highest floods. These several circumstances carry us back irresistibly to the time immediately preceding the last general deluge of our globe, as the period in which this cave was inhabited, and the bones dragged into it by living byænas. Now we believe no fact in civil history is better established, than that our globe has experienced no universal deluge for more than 4000 years. If any one doubts this, let him read Cuvier's Theory of the Earth. The diluvial catastrophe, then, by which the Kirkdale hyænas were destroyed, and the mud in the cave deposited over the bones, agrees in point of time with the deluge of Noab. We regret, however, that Mr. Buckland is not more full upon this point; and we think he has not given us the evidence upon it with his usual clearness and felicity. Compare now the phenomena of this cavern with the chronology of Moses. On the floor of the cave we find a quantity of stalagmite, and mixed with the upper part of it, the bones of the various animals. Then comes the mud, and above this, a second deposite of stalagmite, more abundant than that beneath the mud. Now this is just as we should expect according to Moses' account; since the time subsequent to Noah's deluge, in which the uppermost stalagmite was forming, is twice as long as that between the creation and the deluge, cave. in which the lowest stalagmite was deposited. This same fact is found to exist in all other caves where it could be observed. It seems we are here pointed to a short period at first, in which the stalagmite was forming, but no animals inhabited the Next succeeded the period in which it was a den for the hyænas. This continued till the deluge destroyed them, and subsequently to that time, we have a long period in which stalactites and stalagmites were gradually accumulating, but no other important change took place. At the deluge, nature closed up and seal ed this rich repository of antediluvian existence, to remain unbroken for more than four thousand years. From this mass of "facts developed in this charnel house of the antediluvian forests of Yorkshire," we arrive with a certainty little short of demonstration, to the conclusion, "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 precoding the formation of the diluvian gravel; and if they inhabited this country, it follows as a corollary, that they also inhabited all those other regions of the northern hemisphere, in which similar bones have been found, under precisely the same circumstances, not mineralized, but simply in the state of grave boues imbedded in loam, or clay, or gravel, over a great part of northern Europe, as well as North America and Siberia." p. 42. "It is in the highest degree curious to observe, that four of the genera of animals whose bones are thus widely diffused over the temperate, and even polar regions of the northern hemisphere, should at present, only exist in tropical climates, and chiefly south of the equator; and that the only country in which the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and hyaena are now associated, is southern Africa. In the immediate neighbourhood of the Cape, they all live and die together, as they formerly did in Britain; whilst the hippopotamus is now confined exclusively to Africa, and the elephant, rhinoceros and hyæna are also widely diffused over the continent of Asia," "To the question which here so naturally presents itself, as to what might have been the climate of the northern hemis phere, when peopled with genera of animals which are now confined to the warmer regions of the earth, it is not essential to the point before me, to find a solution; my object is to establish the fact, that the animals lived and died in the regions where their remains are now found, vian waters from other latitudes. The and were not drifted thither by the dilustate of the climate in which these extinct species may have lived antecedently to the great inundation by which they were extirpated, is a distinct matter of inquiry, on which the highest authorities are by no means agreed. It is the opinion of Cuvier, on the one hand, that, as some of the fossil animals differ from existing species probable they had a constitution adapted of the genera to which they belong, it is to endure the rigours of a northern winter; and this opinion derives support from the Siberian elephant's carcass, discovered with all its flesh entire, in the ice of Tungusia, and its skin partially covered by long hair and wool; and from the hairy rhinoceros found in 1771, in the same country, in the frozen gravel of Vilhoui, having its flesh and skin still perfect, and of which the head and feet are now preserved at Petersburg, together with the skeleton of the elephant above alluded to, and a large quantity of its wool, to which Cuvier adds the further fact, that there are genera of existing animals, e. g. the fox tribe, which have species adapted to the extremes both of polar and tropical climates." "On the other hand, it is contended that the abundant occurrence of fossil crocodiles and tortoises, and of vegetables and shells, (e. g. the nautilus,) nearly allied in structure and character to those which are now peculiar to hot climates, in the secondary strata, as well as in the diluvium of high north latitudes, renders it more probable that the climate was warm in which these plants and animals lived and died, than that a change of constitution and habit should have taken place in so many animal and vegetable genera, the existing members of which are rarely found except in the warmer regions of the present earth. To this argument, I would add a still greater objection, arising from the difficulty of maintaining such animals as those we are considering, amid the rigours of a polar winter; and, this difficulty cannot be solved by supposing them to have migrated periodically, like the musk, ox and rein-deer, of Melville Island; for in the case of crocodiles and tortoises, extensive emigration is almost impossible, and not less so to such an unwieldly animal as the hippopotamus, when out of water. It is equally difficult to imagine that they could have passed their winters in lakes or rivers frozen up with ice; and though the elephant and rhinoceros, if clothed in wool, may have fed themselves on branches of trees and brushwood, during the extreme severities of winter, still I see not how even these were to be obtained in the frozen regions of Siberia, which at present produce little more than moss and lichens, which, during a great part of the year, are buried under impenetrable ice and snow; yet it is in these regions of extreme cold, on the utmost verge of the now habitable world, that the bones of eleph nts are found occasionally crowded in heaps along the shores of the icy sea, from Archangel to Behring's Straits, forming whole islands composed of bones and mud, at the mouth of the Lena, and encased in icebergs, from which they are melted out by the solar heat of their short summer, along the coast of Tungusia, in sufficient numbers to form an important article ofcommerce." pp. 44, 45, 46. The general fact on this subject, so far as we have been able to learn it from the records of geology, seems to be, that the greater part, and most important, of the animal and vegetable remains found in northern latitudes, not only in diluvium, but in the older strata, were obviously adapted to a tropical climate; and every one of these plants and animals either became extinct by the deluge, or are found at present, near the equator only. Now with all due deference to the opinion of Cuvier, it appears to us quite unphilosophical, to suppose that such constitutions could have survived in a northern climate. Surely, it is the most natural conslusion that plants and animals, whose structure so obviously resembles those of the warm latitudes as to strike every observer, must have lived in such a climate. For the leading facts in the case manifestly favour such a supposition, while those apparently favouring a contrary hypothesis, are few and equivocal. Moses asserts, that the dove, sent out of the ark by Noah, returned at length with an olive leaf in her mouth; which must have been plucked from the mountains of which Ararat constitutes a peak, as the waters then covered the lower parts of the earth. To this, Tournefort, the celebrated botanist, objected, that the climate of Ararat, and the surrounding region is too cold to produce the olive. But if the climate of northern latitudes was changed at the deluge from warmer to temperate, this objection is done away and Moses' account is vindicated in such a way as to lend an additional evidence of the faithfulness of the historian. If such a change took place, it seems probable also, that it had some connexion with the decrease of antediluvian longevity; and we are not without an expectation, that the future discoveries of geologists will throw additional light upon the subject. Urged on by the interesting results to which the phenomena of the Kirk. dale cavern had conducted him, Professor Buckland resolved to examine personally the most noted of those caves and open fissures in Great Britain and on the European continent, in which bones, or diluvial And he mud, had been discovered. has given a circumstantial account of all these, accompanied by most instructive drawings. We regret that we have no room to enter into details. It must suffice, however, to give the general conclusions at which he arrives. Most of these caves are in Germany, and the author in speaking of these says, "There prevails throughout them all, in comparing them with each other, as well as with those in England, a harmony of circumstances exceeding what my fullest expectations would have anticipated; all tending to establish the important con clusion of their having been once and once only submitted to the action of a since the period in which they were deluge, and that this event happened inhabited by the wild beasts. In every ca ve I examined, I found a similar desposit of mud or sand, sometimes with and sometimes without a mixture of rolled pebbles and angular fragments of rock, and having its surface more or less abundantly covered over with a single crust of stalagmite, and in those among them, which had been inhabited as dens before the introduction |