164 Notice and Review of the Reliquiae Diluviunae. 
meal, from individual carcases, which they found in the 
adjacent country, : Z % 
The evidence derived from all these facts, and others of 
minor importance, which we have not room to state, appears 
then to be direct and conclusive to prove that the Kirkdale 
cave was inhabited by successive generations of hyanas. 
No other supposition wil] stand the test of examination a 
moment. If it be said that the various animals entere 
this cavern spontaneously, to die there, or had fled thither 
to escape some approaching catastrophe, it may be repli- 
ed, that the cave was not large enough to admit the larger 
animals, and no circumstances can be imagined that would 
collect together spontaneously, animals of so dissimilar 
habits as hyznas, tigers, bears, wolves, foxes, horses, oxen, 
deer, rabbits, weasles, water-rats, mice and birds. If it 
be supposed that these bones were drifted into the cavern 
by ai: od, it remains to be shown how the larger animals 
could have entered, why the bones are so broken, an 
why there is such a disproportion between the number of 
teeth and the bones. We give the third supposition in the 
author’s own words. : 
“The third and only remaining hypothesis that occurs 
to me is, that they were dragged in for food by the hya- 
nas, who caught their prey in the immediate vicinity of 
their den; and as they could not have dragged it home 
from any very great distances, it follows, that the animals 
they fed on all lived and died not far from the spot where 
eir remains are found.”—p. 40. 
“The accumulation of these bones,’ then, appears to 
have been a long process, going on during a succession of 
years, whilst all the animals in question were natives of 
this country. The general dispersion of bones of the same 
animals through the diluvian gravel of high latitudes, over 
a great part of the northern hemisphere, shows that the 
period in which they inhabited these regions, was that 1m- 
mediately preceding the formation of this gravel, and that 
they perished by the same waters which produced it. ™- 
Cuvier has, moreover, ascertained, that the fossil elephant, 
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and hyena, belong to species 
now unknown; and as there is no evidence that they 
have, at any time, subsequent to the formation of diluvium, 
existed in these regions, we may conclude that the pert 
