.1822.] Royal Society. 229 



spontaneously, or having fallen in, or been drifted in by water, or 

 with any other than that of their having been dragged in, either 

 entire on piecemeal, by the beasts of prey vi^hose den it was. 



Five examples are adduced of bones of the same animals dis^ 

 covered in similar caverns in other parts of this country, viz. at 

 Crawley Rocks near Swansea, in the Mendip Hills at Clifton, 

 at Wirks worth in Derbyshire, and at Oreston near Plymouth. 

 In some of these, there is evidence of the bones having been 

 introduced by beasts of prey ; but in that of Hutton Hill, in the 

 Mendips, which contains rolled pebbles, it is probable they were 

 washed in. In the case of open lissures, some may have fallen in. 



A comparison is then instituted between these caverns in 

 England, and those in Germany described by Rosenmuller, Esher 

 and Leibnitz, as extending over a tract of 200 leagues, and con- 

 taining analogous deposits of the bones of two extinct species of 

 bear, and the same extinct species of hyeena that occurs at 

 Kirkdale. 



In the German caves, the bones are in nearly the same state 

 of preservation as in the English, and are not in entire skeletons, 

 but dispersed as in a charnel house. They are scattered all over 

 the caves, sometimes loose, sometimes adhering together by 

 stalagmite, and forming beds of many feet in thickness. They 

 are of all parts of the body, and of animals of all ages ; but are 

 never rolled. With them is found a quantity of black earth 

 derived from the decay of animal flesh ; and also in the newly 

 discovered caverns, we find descriptions of a bed of mud. The 

 latter is probably the same diluvial sediment which we find at 

 'Kirkdale. The unbroken condition of the bones, and presence 

 of black animal earth, are consistent with the habit of bears, as 

 being rather addicted to vegetable than animal food, and in this 

 case, not devouring the dead individuals of their own species. In 

 the hyaena's cave, on the other hand, where both flesh and bones 

 ^were devoured, we have no black earth ; but instead of it 

 -we find in the album grsecum, evidence of the fate that has 

 -attended the carcases and lost portions of the bones whose 

 fragments still remain. 



Three fourths of the total number of bones in the German 

 caves belong to two extinct species of biear, and two-thirds of 

 the remainder to the extinct hyaena of Kirkdale. There are also 

 bones of an animal of the cat kind (resembhng the jaguar or 

 spotted panther of South America) and of the wolf, fox, and 

 polecat, and rarely of elephant and rhinoceros.* 



The bears and hyaena of all these caverns, as well as the ele- 

 phant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, belong to the same extinct 

 species that occur also fossil in the diluvian gravel, whence it 

 'follows that the period in which they inhabited these regions 



* M. Rosenmuller shows that the bears not only lired and died, but were also bora, 

 • in the same caverns in which their bones have been thus accumulated, and the same 

 conclusion follows from the facts observed in the cave in Yorkshire. 



