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viz. carbonate of lime, phosphate of lime, and triple phos- 

 phate of ammonia and magnesia ; and, on being shown to 

 the keeper of the beasts at Exeter Change, was immedi- 

 ately recognized by him as the dung of the hyaena. The 

 new and curious fact of the preservation of this substance is 

 explained by its affinity to bone. 



" The animals found in the cave agree in species with 

 those that occur in the diluvian gravel of England, and of 

 great part of the northern hemisphere : four of them, the 

 hyaena, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, belong to 

 species that are now extinct, and to genera that live exclu- 

 sively in warm climates, and which are found associated 

 together only in the southern portions of Africa, near the 

 Cape. It is certain, from the evidence afforded by the 

 interior of the den (which is of the same kind with that 

 afforded by the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii), that 

 all these animals lived and died in Yorkshire, in the period 

 immediately preceding the deluge ; and a similar conclusion 

 may be drawn with respect to England generally, and to 

 those other extensive regions of the northern hemisphere, 

 where the diluvian gravel contains the remains of similar 

 species of animals. The extinct fossil hyaena most nearly 

 resembles that species which now inhabits the Cape, whose 

 teeth are adapted beyond those of any other animal to the 

 purpose of cracking bones, and whose habit is to carry 

 home parts of its prey to devour them in the caves of rocks 

 which it inhabits. This analogy explains the accumulation 

 of the bones in the den at Kirkdale. They were carried in 

 for food by the hyaenas ; the smaller animals, perhaps, entire ; 

 the larger ones piecemeal ; for by no other means could the 

 bones of such large animals as the elephant and rhinoceros 

 have arrived at the inmost recesses of so small a hole, unless 

 rolled thither by water ; in which case, the angles would 

 have been worn off by attrition, but they are not. 



"Judging from the proportions of the remains now found 



