24:4; Dr Buckland on the Bones of Hyenas, $c. 



M. Marcel de Serres has published a list of the animal re- 

 mains contained in this cavern, which differ but little from 

 those of Kirkdale. The most remarkable addition is that of 

 the beaver and the badger, together with the smaller shaped or 

 Abyssinian hyenas. For these discoveries we are indebted to 

 the exertions of M. Cristol, a young naturalist of Montpellier. 



With respect to the bones of camels said to have been found 

 in the cavern, Dr Buckland proved that the bono referred to 

 does not belong to the camel. In some few parts of the dilu- 

 vial mud there occur the bones of rabbits and rats ; and M. 

 Cristol also discovered the leg of a domestic cock. All these 

 were found by Dr Buckland to be of recent origin, not adher- 

 ing to the tongue when dry like the antediluvian bones. The 

 rats and rabbits are supposed to have entered the cave spon- 

 taneously, and died in the holes which they had burrowed in 

 the soft diluvial mud, and the cock's bone to have been intro- 

 duced by a fox through a small hole in the side of the cavern, 

 which had been long known as a retreat of foxes, in the bottom 

 of an ancient quarry. 



Some shells, similar to those which hybernate in the soil or 

 fissures of the neighbouring rocks, are also found in the mud 

 that filled the cave. The author considers that this may either 

 be the shells of animals that in modern times have entered 

 some small crevices in the side of the cavern to hybernate there, 

 and have buried themselves in the mud ; or that they entered 

 in more ancient times, and died while the cave was inhabited 

 by hyenas, and lay mixed by the bones before the introduc- 

 tion of the mud and pebbles ; or that they were washed in by 

 the same diluvial water which imported there the alluvial de- 

 tritus in which they are now imbedded. 



Dr Buckland draws a strong line of distinction between the 

 mud and gravel of the caves and fissures, which he considers 

 to be part of the general diluvium so widely spread over the 

 adjacent country, and the local fresh water formations occur- 

 ring also in the same neighbourhood of Montpellier ; and which 

 differ as decidedly from them, and bear to them the same rela- 

 tion, that the gravel on the summit of the Headen Hill in the 

 Isle of Wight bears to the strata of fresh water limestone that 

 lie beneath it. 



The author next proceeds to consider the epoch of the de- 



