174. Rev. Mr. Buckland’s, Account of Fossil Teeth.and ‘[Sxrr. 
away and polish can have been produced ;* for the process of 
rolling by water would have made pebbles of them, or at least 
would have broken off the edges of the teeth and delicate points 
of the fractured extremities of the bone, which still remain 
untouched and sharp. 
I have already stated that the greatest number of teeth (those 
of the hyena excepted) belong to the ruminating animals ; from 
which it is to be inferred that they formed the ordinary prey of 
the hyenas. I have also to add that very few of the teeth of 
these animals bear marks ofage; they seem to have perished by 
a violent death in the vigour of life. With respect to the horns 
of deer that appear to have fallen off by necrosis, it is probable 
that the hyenas found them thus shed, and dragged them home 
for the purpose of gnawing them in their den; and to animals so 
fond of bones, the spongy interior of horns of this kind would 
not be unacceptable. 1 found a fragment of stags’ horn in so 
‘small a recess of the cave, that it never could have been intro- 
duced, unless singly, and after separation from the head ; and 
near it was the molar tooth of an elephant. I have seen no 
remains of horns of oxen, and perhaps there are none, for the 
bony portion of their interior being of a porous spongy nature, 
would probably have been eaten by the hyenas, while the outer 
case, being of a similar composition to hair and hoofs, would not 
long have escaped total decomposition. For the same reason 
the horn of the rhinoceros, being merely a mass of compacted 
hair-like fibres, has never been found fossil in gravel beds with 
the bones of that animal, nor does it occur in the cave at Kirk- 
dale. Ihave been told that sheeps’ horns laid on land for manure 
will be consumed in ten or a dozen years ; the calcareous matter 
of bone being nearly allied to limestone, is the only portion of 
animal bodies that occurs in a fossil state, unless when preserved, 
like the Siberian elephant, of the same extinct species with that 
of Kirkdale, by being frozen in ice, or buried in peat. 
The extreme abundance of the teeth of water rats has also 
been alluded to; and though the idea of hyenas eating rats may 
appear ridiculous, it is consistent with the omnivorous appetite 
of modern hyzenas ; nor is the disproportion in size of the animal 
to that of its prey, greater than that of wolves and foxes, which 
are supposed by Capt. Parry to feed chiefly on mice during the 
long winters of Melville Island. Our largest dogs eat rats and 
mice ; jackalls occasionally prey on mice, and dogs and foxes 
will eat frogs. It is probable, therefore, that neither the size nor 
* I have been informed by an officer in India that passing by a tiger’s den in the 
absence of the tiger, he examined the interior, and: found in the middle of it a large 
portion of stone on which the tiger reposed, to be worn smooth and polished by the frie- 
tion of his body. ‘The same thing may be seen on marble steps and altars, and even 
metallic statues in places of worship that are favourite objects of pilgrimage: they are 
often deeply worn and polished by the knees, and even lips of pilgrims, to a degree that 
without experience of the fact we could scarcely have anticipated. 
