RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS. 345 



and the herbivorous species appear to have perished by 

 accidentally falling into the cavernous fissures before they 

 were filled up by the mud, clay, and drift. 



The remains of the Rhinoceros discovered in the cave at 

 Kirkdale, tell a very different story : they manifest, as Dr. 

 Buckland has demonstrated, abundant evidence of the action 

 of the powerful jaws and teeth of the Hysenas, whose copros 

 and vestigia prove that ancient cavern to have been a place 

 of refuge to those Carnivora.* The fossil bones of the Rhi- 

 noceroses found in this cavern, as well as in that near Tor- 

 quay, called Rentes Hole, belonged to animals which 

 inhabited England during the period immediately pre- 

 ceding the deposition of the unstratified drift, and they 

 coexisted with the Mammoth, Hippopotamus, huge 

 Aurochs, Ox and Deer, which likewise became the occa- 

 sional prey of the Hysenas, whose dwelling-place was 

 thus converted into a kind of charnel-house of the large 

 Herbivora. 



The circumstances under which remains of the Rhino- 

 ceros have been discovered in the limestone caves of the 

 Mendips, and in those on Durdham Down, lead to similar 

 explanations of their mode of introduction. 



The humerus of a Rhinoceros wag discovered, associated 

 with remains of the Hy&na speleea, in one of the caves in 

 the carboniferous limestone at Cefn in Denbighshire, at 

 a height of about one hundred feet above the present 

 drainage of the country.-f- The Rev. Mr. Wilson, of Ley- 

 ton, has kindly submitted to my examination a collection 



* Ante, pp. 141 147. 



+ These caves were described by the Rev. Edward Stanley, now Bishop of 

 Norwich, in the proceedings of the Geological Society, vol. i. p. 402. Mr. Mur- 

 chison remarks ( Silurian System, p. 552,) that the evidence produced is scarcely 

 adequate to sustain the inference that the cave was inhabited, though it affords 

 satisfactory proof that such wild animals then existed in an adjacent region. 



