1822.] Bones discovered in a Cave at Kirkdale,in Yorkshire. 179 
be referred to any other than a diluvial origin, that such animals 
were the antediluvian inhabitants of this country ; but the proof 
was imperfect, as it has been said they might have been drifted 
or floated hither by the waters, from warmer latitudes ; but the 
facts developed in this charnel house of the antediluvian forests 
of Yorkshire show that there was a long succession of years in 
which these animals had been the prey. of the hyenas, which, 
like themselves at that time, must have inhabited these regions 
of the earth ; and it is in, the diluvial wreck occurring in such 
latitudes that similar bones have been found buried in the state 
of grave bones over great part of northern Europe, as well as 
North America and Siberia. The catastrophe producing this 
gravel appears to have been the last event that has operated 
generally to modify the surface of the earth, and the few local 
and partial changes that have succeeded it, such as the forma- 
tion of deltas, terraces, tufa, torrent-gravel, and peat-bogs, all 
conspire to show, that the period of their commencement was 
subsequent to that at which the diluvium was formed.* 
It is in the highest degree curious to observe, that four of the 
genera of animals whose bones are thus widely diffused over the 
temperate, and even polar regions of the northern hemisphere, 
should at present exist only in tropical climates, and chiefly south 
of the equator; and that the only country in which the elephant, 
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and hyzna, are now associated, is 
Southern Africa. Inthe immediate neighbourhood of the Cape 
* It was stated in describing the locality of the cave at Kirkdale, and on comparing it 
with the fact of its containing the remains of large and small aquatic animals, that there 
was probably a lake in this part of the country at the period when they inhabited it; and 
this hypothesis is rendered probable by the form and disposition of the hills that still 
encircle the Vale of Pickering. 
Inclosed on the south, the west, north-west, and north, by the lofty ranges of the 
Wolds, the Howardian hills, the Hambleton hills, and Eastern Moorlands, the waters 
of this vale must either run eastward to Filey Bay, or inland towards York; and such is 
the superior elevation of the strata along the coast, that the sources of the Derwent, ris- 
ing almost close to the sea, near Scarborough and Filey, are forced to run west and south- 
ward 50 miles inland away from the sea, till falling into the Ouse, they finally reach it 
by turning again eastward through the Humber. The only outlet by which this. drain- 
age is accomplished, is the gorge at New Malton; and though it is not possible to 
ascertain what was the precise extent of this antediluvian lake, or how much of the low 
districts, now constituting the Vale of Pickering, may have been excavated by the same 
diluvian waters that produced the gorge; it is obvious that without the existence of this 
gorge, much of the district within it would be laid under water; and it is equally 
obvious that the gorge is referable to the agency of diluvian denudation, the ravages of 
which have not, perhaps, left a single portion of the antediluvian surface of the whole 
earth, which is not torn and re-modelled, so as to. haye lost all traces of the exact features 
it bore antecedently to the operations of the deluge. 
_ It is probable, that inland lakes were much more numerous than they are at present, 
before the excavation of the many gorges by which our modern rivers make their escape ; 
and this is consistent with the frequent occurrence of the remains of the hippopotamus in 
the diluyian gravel of England, and of various parts of Europe. It is not unlikely that, 
in this antediluvian period, England was connected with the Continent, and ‘that the 
excavation of the shallow channel of the Straits of Dover, and of a considerable portion 
of that part of the German ocean which lies between the east coast of England and the 
mouths of the Elbe and Rhine, may have been the effect of diluyial denudation. The 
average depth of all this tract of water is said ‘ be less than 30 fathoms. 
N ’ 
