1 1 4. Prof. Buckland on the Exuincc of Bears at Kiihloch. 



and circumstances of the cave at Kiihloch: the absence of 

 pebbles, and the presence of such an enormous mass of animal 

 dust, are the anomalies I allude to ; and both these circuiTi- 

 stances indicate a less powerful action of diluvial waters within 

 this cave than in any other, excepting Kirkdale. To these 

 waters, however, we must still refer the introduction of the 

 brown loam, and the formation or laying open of the present 

 mouth of the cavern ; from its low position so near the bottom 

 of the valley, this mouth could not have been exposed in its 

 present state, and indeed must have been entirely covered un- 

 der the solid rock, till all the materials that lay above it had 

 been swept away, and the valley cut down nearly to its present 

 base ; and as the cave ends inwardly in a ad de sac, and there 

 is no vertical fissure, or any other mode of access to it, but by 

 the present mouth, if we can find therein any circumstances 

 that would prevent the admission of pebbles from without, or 

 the removal of the animal remains from within, the cause of 

 the anomaly we are considering will be explained. The throat 

 of the cave, by which we ascend from the mouth to the in- 

 terior, is highly inclined upwards, so that neither would any 

 pebbles that were drifting on with the waters that excavated 

 the valley, ascend this inclined plane to enter the cave, nor 

 would the external currents, however rapidly rushing by the 

 outside of the mouth, have power to agitate (except by slight 

 eddies in the lower part of the throat) the still waters that 

 would fill the bottom of the cavern, and which being there 

 quiescent, would, as at Kirkdale, deposit a sediment from the 

 mud suspended in them upon the undisturbed remains of what- 

 ever kind that lay on the floor. From its low position, it is 

 also probable that this vault formed the deepest recess of an 

 extensive range of inhabited caves, to which successive genera- 

 tions of antediluvian bears withdrew themselves from the tur- 

 bulent company of their fellows, as they felt sickness and death 

 approaching; the habit of domesticated beasts and birds to 

 retire and hide themselves on the approach of death, renders 

 it probable that wild and savage animals also do the same. 

 The unusual state of decay of the teeth and bones in this black 

 earth may be attributed to the exposed state of this cavern 

 arising from its large mouth and proximity to the external at- 

 mosphere, and to the absence of that protection which in closer 

 and deeper caves they hnve received, by being secluded from 

 such exposure, or imbedded in more argillaceous earth, or in- 

 vested with and entirely sealed up beneath a crust of §ta- 

 lao-mite. 



XXIII. Ob- 



