ON CAVES. 17 



porous mass ; and inside the caves there is a difference in 

 the quantity of water that trickles over different parts, a 

 difference in the amount of carbonate of lime in solution in 

 the water, and a difference in the rate of evaporation and 

 giving-off of the acid gas. 



Most of the leading facts with regard to caves and cave- 

 deposits were noticed by Dr. Buckland, and clearly told in his 

 interesting book, the Reliquice Diluviance. We must remember, 

 of course, that he wrote that work to support a theory, and 

 so, when he gets to the description of the gravels, &c., 

 associated with the cave-deposits, either in or near the caverns, 

 he sees in them the evidence of a short and transient, but 

 universal, flood. But he quite realised the long sojourn of 

 the beasts of prey in the caves, and the many generations of 

 animals that furnished them with food. He says that he had 

 estimated that in some of the German caverns the bones 

 found indicated ten times the number of individuals that 

 could in the flesh have been crammed into the cave. He 

 spared no pains in gathering information as to the habits of 

 the modern representatives of the hyaena and other animals 

 whose remains occur in the deposits ; and his graphic descrip- 

 tion leaves little to be added. It is interesting to read his inge- 

 nious inquiries into the cause of the polished and worn bones 

 which are found in these old hyaena-dens, which he refers to the 

 trampling of the animals on the fragments as they lay partly 

 imbedded in the muddy floor ; pointing out, by way of illus- 

 tration, how some objects of reverence, in stone or metal, 

 have been rubbed down by the touch of devotees. He 

 probably had in his mind the toe of the bronze statue of 

 St. Peter in Rome, which has been polished and worn by the 

 lips of the faithful. 



Buckland's view, that the deposits of the celebrated Kirk- 

 dale Cave, and other similar caves which he refers to, would 

 be connected with a great submergence, which he identified 

 with Noah's Flood, was not, however, so wild as we are some- 

 times inclined to think, in our eagerness to assert the inde- 

 pendence of such inquiries from all preconceived ideas or 

 theological tenets. There certainly is evidence in many places 

 along our coasts of small depressions since the occupation of 

 those districts by man, and it is extremely probable that the 

 land had not at any rate recovered its present elevation in this 

 country after the greater submergence that followed on the 

 Glacial age, before man appeared on the scene. 



There is a great deal of evidence of torrent-action in these 

 caves. There are marine shells washed into them and buried 

 in the same earth as Palaeolithic man and the extinct 



