of the Mineral and Mosaic al Geologies. 315 



" The hypothesis, moreover, asks, • if bears eat mice, why should 

 not hyaenas eat rats 1 ' I know no reason why they should not ; 

 but if they are so peculiarly fond of bones, and yet so awkward as 

 to drop them in the actual eating, it is most probable they would 

 have gratified their natural propensity as soon as they felt the calls 

 of hunger return, instead of neglecting them, and that they would 

 thus have converted them into a much more proportionate quantity 

 of album grcecum, than appears by the report to have been dis- 

 covered in the cave." The hyama's fondness for bones, therefore, 

 becomes a " strong presumptive evidence that this rich treasury 

 of bones of all magnitudes was never in the power of a confra- 

 ternity of hyasnas ' whose habit it is to devour the bones of their 

 prey*.' " 



3. Our author questions the certainty that the small balls, 

 called album grcecum, were really the excrement of the hyama, and 

 supposes they may have been merely accidental conglobations of 

 the sediment in the cave, which is stated to have consisted of a 

 soft mud, or loam, mixed with much calcareous matter, which seems 

 to be derived, in part, from comminuted boncsf. This strikes us 

 as the weakest part of our author's objections to the hypothesis, 

 and we think he must have forgotten that the album grsecum was 

 submitted to analysis by Dr. Wollaston, " who found it to be com- 

 posed of the ingredients that might be expected in fsccal matter 

 derived from bones, viz., phosphate of lime, carbonate of lime, and 

 a very small proportion of the triple phosphate of ammonia and 

 magnesia J." No mention is made of the presence of alumina 

 which must have been found in them had the balls been formed of 

 the sediment of the cave, the substance of which is said to have 

 been an argillaceous and slightly micaceous lorm§, mixed with 

 the calcareous matter, fyc. 'The conjecture with which Mr. Penn 

 concludes this head, is more forcible; " if the animal feeces could 

 have remained in the cave undissolved by the diluvial ivtitcrs, which 

 the hypothesis supposes to have occupied it during the period of 

 their continuance on the earth, an accumulation of the same sub- 

 stance would probably have been discovered underneath the diluvial 

 mud, answering by proportion to the number of those inhabitants 

 in their succeeding generations, and to the duration of their te- 

 nancy ; which does not appear to be the case from the terms of the 

 report." 



4. The supposed marks of hyaenas' teeth on the larger bones, 

 Mr. Penn very rationally conceives may be attributed to a. variety 

 of totally different causes, and very justly exclaims, " it is too 

 much to call upon us in this period of the world to acknowledge the 

 remarks on antediluvian bones found in Yorkshire, for evidences of 



* Reliqwce Diiwi'jina;, p. 37- t Wd-t j>« lo. + Hid., p. 20. 

 § Ibid., p. 10. 



