t228 Proceedings of Ph llosophkal Societies, [March, 



hyaenas are found also in the den. These have been analyzed 

 by Dr. Wollaston, and found to be composed of the same ingre- 

 dients as the album graecum, or white fteees of dogs that are fed 

 on bones, viz. carbonate of lime, phosphate of lime, and triple 

 phosphate of ammonia and magnesia; and, on being shown to 

 the keeper of the beasts at Exeter Change, were immediately 

 recognized by him as the dung of the hyaina. The new and 

 (Mirious fact of the presel-vation of this substance is explained by 

 its afiinity to bone. 



The animals found in the cave agree in species with those that 

 occur in the diluvian gravel of England, and of great part of the 

 nQFthftrn hemisphere; four of them, the hyeena, elephant, rhino- 

 c^os, and hippopotamus^ belong to species that are now extinct, 

 and to genera that live exclusively in warm chmates, and which 

 are found associated together only in the southern portions of 

 Africa near the Cape. It is certain from the evidence afforded 

 by the interior of the den (which is of the same kind with that 

 afforded by the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii) that all these 

 animals lived and died in Yorkshire, in the period immediately 

 preceding the deluge ; and a similar conclusion may be drawn 

 with respect to England generally, and to those other extensive 

 regions of the northern hemisphere, where the diluvian gravel 

 contains the remains of similar species of animals. The extinct 

 lossil hyaena most nearly resembles that species which now 

 inhabits the Cape, whose teeth are adapted beyond those of any 

 other animal to the purpose of cracking bones, and whose habit 

 it is to carry home parts of its prey to devour them in the caves 

 of rocks which it inhabits. This analogy explains the accumu- 

 lation of the bones in the den at Kirkdale. They were carried 

 in; for food by the hyeenas ; the smaller animals, perhaps, entire; 

 the larger ones piecemeal ; for by no other means could the 

 bones of such large animals as the elephant and rhinoceros have 

 arrived at the inmost recesses of so small a hole, unless rolled' 

 thither by water ; in which case, the angles would have been 

 worn off by attrition, but they are not. 



Judging from the proportions of the remains now found in the 

 den, the ordinary food of the hysenas seems to have been oxen, 

 deer, and water-rats; the bones of the larger animals are more 

 rare; and the fact of the bones of the hyoenas being broken up 

 equally with the rest, added to the known preference they have 

 for putrid flesh and bones, renders it probable that they devoured 

 thedead carcases of their own species. Some of the bones and 

 teeth appear to have undergone various stages of decay by lying 

 at the bottom of the den while it was inhabited, but little or none 

 since the introduction of the diluvian sediment in which they 

 hare beea imbedded. The circumstances of the cave and its 

 contents are altogether icconsistent with the hypothesis, of all 

 the various animals of such dissimilar habits having entered it 



