186 Rev. Mr. Buckland’s Account of Fossil Teeth and [Srrr. 
by no means acquiesce ; though I think it probable that the 
enings had, as at Kirkdale, been long ago filled up with rub- 
bish, mud, stalactite, or fragments of rock reunited, as sometimes 
happens, into a breccia as solid as the original rock, and over- 
grown with grass. It is now too late to appeal to the evidence 
of facts, as the rock in which the cave existed is entirely 
removed ; but the circumstances of similar caverns that have 
communication with the surface, either open or concealed, both 
in this neighbourhood, and in compact limestone rocks of all 
ages and formations, and in all countries, added to the identity 
of species and undecayed state of the animal remains which they 
contain, render the argument from analogy perfect, to show that 
the bones at Oreston are not coeval, and have only an accidental 
connection with the rock in the cavities of which they were 
found. 
It by no means follows from the certainty of the bones having 
been dragged in by beasts of prey to the small cavern at Kirk- 
dale, that those of similar animals must have been introduced in 
all other cases in the same manner; for, as these animals were 
the antediluvian inhabitants of the countries in which the caves 
occur, it is possible, that some may have retired into them to 
die, others have fallen into the fissures by accident and there 
perished, and others have been washed in by the diluvial waters. 
By some one or more of these three latter hypotheses, we may 
explain those cases in which the bones are few in number and 
unbroken, the caverns large and the’fissures extending upwards 
to the surface ; but where they bear marks of having been lace- 
rated by beasts of prey, and where the cavern is small, and the 
number of bones ard teeth so great, and so disproportionate to 
each other as in the cave at Kirkdale, the only adequate explana- 
tion is, that they were collected by the agency of wild beasts. 
We shall show hereafter, that in the case of the German caves, 
where the quantity of bones is greater than could have beensup- 
plied by 10 times the number of carcases which the caves, if 
crammed to the fuli, could ever have contained, they were the 
bones of bears that lived and died in them during successive 
generations. 
‘We may now proceed to consider how far the circumstances 
of the caves we have been examining in England appear consist- 
ent with those of analogous caverns in other parts of the world. 
The history of the diluvian gravel of the Continent, and of the 
animal remains contained in it, appears altogether identical with 
that of our own; and with respect to the bones that occur in 
caverns, the chief difference seems to be, that on the Continent 
some of the caves have their mouths open, and have been inha- 
bited in the post-diluvial period by animals of now existing 
species. Thus at Gailenreuth the great extinct bear (Ursus 
spelzus) occurs, together with the Yorkshire species of extinct 
hyena, ina cave, the mouth of which has no appearance of hav- 
er 
2 
