316 Supplement to the Comparative Estimate 



hyanas' teeth, and to make the truth of geology to depend abso- 

 lutely upon that achiozvledgment." 



5. The finding, in a German cave, of the " bones of a bear, so 

 small that it must have died immediately after its birth," is no 

 proof, as the hypothesis contends, " lhat animals lived and died 

 through successive generations in the cave in which we find their 

 remains," for since the diluvial waters swept away at once an en- 

 tire animal creation, of all ages and generations, where we find the 

 exuviae of the old, we shall expect to find the exuviae of the young 

 also, " and then the remains of a hycena cub in England, or a 

 bear cub in Germany, will no more testify to their having been born 

 in those countries, or to their parents and progenitors having lived 

 and died in them, than the remains of a drowned puppy on the 

 beach, or in the drain to which the Mux of the tide may have 

 driven it." 



6. Our author contends that the popular tales collected by 

 Busbequius (quoted at p. 22, of the Reliquice Diluviance,) cannot 

 lay claim to much authority at the present day, and that it does 

 not appear from natural history that it is the custom of hycenas, 

 and other beasts of prey, to convey their booty to a den, " and that 

 always the sa7?ie den," and there to devour it. On the contrary, 

 natural history informs us, that lions, and other carnivorous ani- 

 mals ravenously devour their food on the spot where they seize it, 

 leaving behind them what they do not immediately consume ; and 

 Campbell says*, that these remnants form a considerable part of 

 the food collected by the Africans during the period called the 

 Bushman's harvest. Mr. Penn concludes, therefore, " that the 

 hyaena's den of the hypothesis had never any more relation to 

 reality and fact, than the lion's den of ancient JEsop;" that those 

 animals eat bones only when they cannot get flesh, and that if " the 

 violence of the diluvial waters" has swept away the heaps of bones 

 which Busbequius asserts the modern hyaenas of his day collected 

 round their dens, and which, consequently, cannot now be shown, 

 " it is only the more necessary that the hypothesis should show us 

 the inside bones of the dens of modern hyaenas." 



7. He denies that natural history supports the assertion that 

 hyaenas divide large carcasses into small portions in order to con- 

 vey them through a small orifice, either by individual labour, " or 

 acting conjointly with others." 



" But that which constitutes the most weighty and really im- 

 portant objection to this ingeniously inventive hypothesis, is its 

 direct contradiction of the philosophical conclusions of the Mo- 

 saical geology, whilst it is unprovided with any counter prin- 

 ciples, deduced from that or any other geology, of virtue to in- 

 validate those conclusions." The hypothesis is founded on the 



* Travels to South Africa, vol. ii. p. 19, 20. 



