1824.] the Formation of the Kirkdale Cave. 51 



The success, however, was not such as to obtain the general 

 assent of the learned ; and the attempt fell into neglect and 

 oblivion. 



Able hands have lately undertaken the revival of this system ; 

 Mr. Penn has endeavoured to reconcile it with the facts of 

 the Kirkdale Cave, which appeared to be strongly inimical 

 to it. 



Acquainted with Mr. Penn's opinions only from the " Ana- 

 lysis of the Supplement to the Comparative Estimate" in the 

 Journal of the Royal Institution for January, not having seen 

 this Supplement itself, the Comparative Estimate, nor 

 even a review of this in a former number of the Journal, and 

 knowing of Mr. Buckland's Reliquia Diluviana, only the 

 account of the Kirkdale Cave published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1822, I have hesitated long about communi- 

 cating the present observations, which presented themselves 

 during the perusal of the above-mentioned slender abstract. 



I have yielded to a sense of the importance of the subject 

 in more than one respect, and of the uncertainty when I shall 

 acquire ampler information at more voluminous sources — to a 

 conviction that it is in his knowledge that man has found his 

 greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he 

 holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, 

 and consequently that no ignorance is probably without loss to 

 him, no error without evil, and that it is therefore preferable 

 to urge unwarranted doubts, which can only occasion additional 

 light to become elicited, than to risk by silence to let a ques- 

 tion settle to rest, while any unsupported assumptions are in- 

 volved in it. 



If I rightly apprehend Mr. Penn's ideas, they are these: 

 Secondary limestones were originally in a soft state. 

 The waters of the deluge while elevated above England, de- 

 posited on it a layer, or bed, of " a soft and plastic" calcareous 

 matter. 



On their departure from the earth, by flowing away towards 

 the north, they floated over England the carcases of a number 

 of tropical animals, clustered together into great masses. 

 These masses became buried in the calcareous mud. 

 On the sinking of the waters of the deluge below the sur- 

 face of England, the bed of calcareous mud began to dry, and 

 on doing so completely, became the present Kirkdale rock. 



The clustered animal bodies enclosed in the calcareous paste, 

 by putrifying, evolved a great quantity of gas, which forced the 

 limestone paste in all directions from them, and thus generated 

 the Cave in which Mr. Buckland found their bunes. 



Soft Stale of Secondary Limestones. 

 That secondary limestones have been in a state to admit fo- 



I'. *-* 



