Buckland's Reliqtii(B DiluviancB. 343 



To this argument I would add a still greater objection, arising from the 

 difficulty of maiiituining such animals as those we are considering amid 

 the rigours of a polar winter ; and this difficulty cannot be solved by sup- 

 posing them to have migrated periodically, like the musk ox and rein-deer 

 of Melville Island; for, in the case of crocodiles and tortoises, extensive 

 emigration is almost impossible, and not less so to such an unwieldy 

 animal as the hippopotamus when o>it of water. It is equally difficult to 

 imagine that they could have passed their winters in lakes or rivers frozen 

 up with ice ; and though the elephant and rhinoceros, if clothed in wool, 

 may have fed themselves on branches of trees and brushwood during the 

 extreme severities of winter, still I see not Low even these were to be 

 obtained in the frozen regions of Siberia, which at present produce little 

 more than moss and lichens, which, during great part of the year, are 

 buried under impenetrable ice and snow; yet it is in those regions of 

 extreme cold, on the utmost verge of the now habitable world, that the 

 bones of elephants are found occasionally, crowded in heaps, along the 

 shores of the icy sea from Archangel to Behring's Straits, forming whole 

 islands composed of bones and mud at the mouth of the Lena, and encased 

 in icebergs, from which they are melted cmt by the solar heat of their short 

 summer, along the coast of Tungusia, in sufficient numbers to form an 

 important article of commerce. 



The chronological inferences deducible from the furniture of 

 the Kirkdale den are summed up by Mr. Buckland at the con- 

 clusion of his description of it, and are briefly as follows : 1. There 

 appears from the state of the sides and bottom of the cave, (be- 

 neath the bony aggregate,) to have been a period in which it 

 existed as an untenanted and empty aperture. 2. It was inha- 

 bited by hyaena's, Sfc. ; and, as we might suppose, stalactitic and 

 stalagmitic formation still went on in it. 3. Mud was intro- 

 duced, and the animal at the same time extirpated. 4. Stalag- 

 mite was again deposited, as shown by the crust upon the sur- 

 face of the mud, and during this period no creature seems to 

 have entered the cave, save and except rats, micii, rabbits, and 

 foxes. From the limited quantity of the latter stalactite, and 

 from the undecayed condition of the bones, our author argues 

 that the time elapsed since the deluge is not of excessive length, 

 that is, not exceeding six thousand years. 



With the mass of minute and accurate information, derived 

 from his visits to the cave at Kirkdale, Mr. Buckland proceeds 

 to inspect several similar accumulations of bones in other parts 

 of England ; and having satisfied himself of their general con- 

 cordance with the above, and of the verification which they afford 

 of his main deductions, he determined upon a visit to some 

 celebrated similar depositaries in Germany, of which the volume 

 before us contains the most entertaining and instructive account 

 extant. He shows from the history and contents of the diluvian 

 gravel of the Continent, that it is identical with that of our own 

 island ; and that with respect to the bones that occur in caverns, 

 the chief difference seems to be, that in Germany some of the 

 caves have remained open, and have consequently been inha- 

 bited by modern or existing species. We cannot follow our 

 indefatigable author into the details and descriptions of the inte- 

 riors and contents of all these diluvian cemeteries, but the fol- 

 lowing remarks apply generally to them all : — 



