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in the den, the ordinary food of the hyaenas seems to have 

 been oxen, deers, and water-rats ; the bones of the larger 

 animals are more rare ; and the fact of the bones of the hy- 

 aenas being broken up equally with the rest, added to the 

 known preference they have for putrid flesh and bones, 

 renders it probable that they devoured the dead carcases of 

 their own species. Some of the bones and teeth appear to 

 have undergone various stages of decay by lying at the 

 bottom of the den while it was inhabited, but little or none 

 since the introduction of the diluvian sediment in which they 

 have been imbedded. The circumstances of the cave and 

 its contents are altogether inconsistent with the hypothesis 

 of all the various animals of such dissimilar habits having 

 entered it spontaneously, or having fallen in, or been drifted 

 in by water, or with any other than that of their having 

 been dragged in, either entire or piecemeal, by the beasts 

 of prey whose den it was. 



" Five examples are adduced of bones of the same 

 animals discovered in similar caverns in other parts of this 

 country, viz. at Crawley Rocks near Swansea, in the 

 Mendip Hills at Clifton, at Wirksworth in Derbyshire, and 

 at Oreston near Plymouth. In some of these, there is 

 evidence of the bones having been introduced by beasts of 

 prey ; but in that of Hutton Hill, in the Mendips, which 

 contains rolled pebbles, it is probable they were washed in. 

 In the case of open fissures, some may have fallen in. 



" A comparison is then instituted between these caverns 

 in England, and those of Germany described by Rosen- 

 muller, Esper and Leibnitz, as extending over a tract of 

 two hundred leagues, and containing analogous deposits of 

 the bones of two extinct species of bear, and the same 

 extinct species of hyaena that occurs at Kirkdale. 



" In the German caves, the bones are in nearly the same 

 state of preservation as in the English, and are not in entire 

 skeletons, but dispersed as in a charnel house. They are 



x x. 



