Royal Society. 219 
animals lived and died in Yorkshire, in the period immediately 
preceding the deluge; and a similar conclusion may be drawn 
with respect to England generally, and to those other extensive 
regions of the northern hemisphere where the diluvian gravel 
contains the remains of similar species of animals. The extinct 
fossil hyena most nearly resembles that species which now in- 
habits the Cape, whose teeth are adapted beyond those of any 
other animal to the purpose of cracking bones, and whose habit 
it is to carry home parts of its prey to devour them in the caves 
of rocks which it inhabits. ‘This analogy explains the accumu- 
lation of the bones in the den at Kirkdale: They were carried 
in for food by the hyenas; the smaller animals, perhaps, entire ; 
the larger ones piecemeal; for by no other means could the 
bones of such large animals as the elephant and rhinoceros have 
arrived at the inmost recesses of so.small a hole, unless rolled 
thither by water; in which case, the angles would have been 
worn off by attrition, but they are not. 
Judging from the proportions of the remains now found in the 
den, the ordinary food of the hyzenas seems to have been oxen, 
deer, and water-rats ; the bones of the larger animals are more 
rare; and the fact of the bones of the hyenas being broken up 
equally with the rest, added to the known preference they have 
for putrid flesh and bones, renders it probable that they devoured 
the dead carcases of their own species. Some of the bones and 
teeth appear to have undergone various stages of decay by lying 
at the bottom of the den while it was inhabited, but little or none 
since the introduction of the diluvian sediment in which they 
have been imbedded. The circumstances of the cave and its 
contents are altogether inconsistent with the hypothesis, of all 
the various animals of such dissimilar habits having entered it 
spontaneously, or having fallen in, or been drifted in by water, or 
with any other than that of their having been dragged in, either 
entire or piecemeal, by the beasts of prey whose den it was. 
Five examples are adduced of bones of the same animals dis- 
covered in similar caverns in other parts of this country, viz. at 
Crawley Rocks near Swansea, in the Mendip Hills at Clifton, 
at Wirksworth in Derbyshire, and at Oreston near Plymouth, 
In some of these, there is evidence of the bones having been in- 
troduced by beasts of prev; but in that of Hutton Hill, in the 
Mendips, which contains rolled pebbles, it is probable they were 
washed in. Jn the case of opeu fissures, some may have fallen 
in. , 
A comparison is then instituted between these caverns in Eng- 
Jand, and those in Germany described by Rosenmuller, . Esper 
and Leibnitz, as extending over a tract of 200 leagues, and con- 
Ee2 taining 
