406 HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



of the conjecture of Douglas, that such animals, though 

 now tropical, were formerly inhabitants of these regions. 



Additional arguments, as novel as ingenious, in support 

 of the same conclusion have been deduced by Dr. Buck- 

 land from his examination of the cave at Kirkdale and of 

 the remains of the quadrupeds, including the Hippopo- 

 tamus, which he discovered in that remarkable depository 

 of organized fossils. Of the great amphibious Pachyderm 

 he cites six molar teeth and a few fragments of canine and 

 incisor teeth, " the best of which are in the possession of 

 Mr. Thorpe, of York."* Fig. 10, in plate vii., repre- 

 sents a much-worn last deciduous molar of the upper jaw 

 of a young Hippopotamus, and figs. 8 and 9 two perma- 

 nent molars which had just cut the gum, and had not had 

 their fangs completed when the animal perished : the tooth 

 in pi. xiii. fig. 7, is the last deciduous molar of the lower 

 jaw. These teeth of the Hippopotamus, therefore, like 

 the teeth of the Mammoth -J- associated with them in the 

 Kirkdale Cave, prove that they were young and inex- 

 perienced individuals that had fallen into the clutches of 

 the co-existing predatory Carnivora which made that cave 

 their lurking-place, and perfectly coincide with the con- 

 clusions which Dr. Buckland thus enunciates : " The 

 facts developed in this charnel-house of the antediluvian 

 forests of Yorkshire demonstrate that there was a long 

 succession of years in which the Elephant, Rhinoceros, 

 and Hippopotamus had been the prey of the Hyaenas, 

 which, like themselves, inhabited England in the period 

 immediately preceding the formation of the diluvial gravel ; 

 and if they inhabited this country, it follows as a corollary 

 that they also inhabited all those other regions of the 

 northern hemispheres in which similar bones have been 



* 'Reliquiae Diluvianse,' p. 18. f Ante p. 259, 334. 



