320 Supplement to the Comparative Estimate 



abridged. " Had the cave with all its actual attendant circum- 

 stances, occurred in a primitive rock, as granite, then, indeed, there 

 would have been a wide field for conjecture, (as to how the bones 

 got in,) and a heavy necessity for resorting to the invention of 

 hypothesis to find a plausible solution of the difficulty ; then 

 indeed, we must perforce have conceded to him, (Professor 

 Buckland,) his proposition, that the ' bones found within it, were 

 lodged in the cavities which contain them at periods long subse- 

 quent to the formation and consolidation of the strata in which the 

 cavity occurs.' But as soon as it is thoroughly ascertained that 

 the rock which encloses them is not of primitive but of secondary 

 formation, bearing its own demonstration of former fluidity in a sea 

 bed; as soon as it is farther ascertained that all the rocks, in whose 

 interior similar acervations have been discovered, are of the same 

 secondary formation ; then we refuse to concede his proposition, 

 because all reason for making the concession is taken away, and 

 all necessity of resorting to the improbable anomaly, that tropical 

 animals once lived in the northern regions where their bones are 

 found, ceases at once." — " The consolidation of the Kirkdale fane- 

 stone subsequently to the introduction of the animals, is therefore to 

 be maintained on principles sounder, more simple, more probable, 

 and more strongly attested, than any which have been or can be 

 adduced to show, that indigenous hycenas once quartered indi- 

 genous elephants in the North Hiding of Yorkshire ; which never- 

 theless constitutes the essence, nay, the very vital principle, of the 

 Jiypothesis." 



Having thus shewn that the phenomena altogether fail in proving, 

 that the Kirkdale cave " was once a den inhabited by hyamas, " on 

 which authority alone, Professor Buckland considers that the 

 " rational idea that the fossil exuviae were driven northward by the 

 diluvial waters from the tropical regions, can be disproved," our 

 author concludes this part of the subject in the following words. 

 " With this great question, thus previously solved and settled for 

 our caution and guidance, with respect to the principles requisite 

 for correctly reading, interpreting, and resolving the important 

 geological phenomena described, we may securely take all the 

 benefit of the wonderful and awful monumentof diluvial power and 

 destruction unveiled to us in the cave of Kirkdale by the energy 

 of its active explorer; and all the enjoyment of the stores of 

 antediluvian antiquity, which the Reliquiae Diluviancc has so 

 liberally laid open to us, and for which our obligations are great 

 indeed, to its piors, able, and attractive author." 



The remaining pages of the Supplcmc7it are occupied by some 

 masterly observations on the consistency of a literal interpretation 

 of the terms in Scripture with philosophical inquiry — on the suffi- 

 ciency of tico revolutions only to account for all the actual phe- 

 nomena of our earth, and the moral evidence that the six days of 



