180 THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. II. 



assemblages of this kind ; of these the cave of Kirkdale, in 

 consequence of the highly interesting disquisition on its 

 contents by Dr. Buckland, is the most celebrated. 



In the summer of 1821, a deep fissure or chasm was dis- 

 covered near Kirkdale, about twenty-five miles NN.E. of 

 York, in a bank about sixty feet above the level of a small 

 valley, and near a public road. Some workmen who were 

 quarrying stone, cut across the narrow mouth of a chasm 

 w r hich had been choked up with rubbish, and overgrown 

 with grass and bushes ; and which, from this cause, as well 

 as from its inaccessible situation, had hitherto escaped 

 observation. The entrance was so small that a person 

 could only enter in a bent position; and the passage w r as ex- 

 ceedingly irregular in its dimensions, varying from two to 

 seven feet in breadth, and from two to fourteen feet in 

 height, its greatest length being 245 feet. The cave was 

 divided into several smaller cavities, which were nearly 

 closed by sparry concretions ; these occurred where the 

 roof was intersected by fissures, and continued for a few 

 feet, but were gradually lost in the superincumbent lime- 

 stone ; they were thickly lined with stalactites. The true 

 floor was only seen near the entrance, for in the interior 

 the whole was covered with a bed of hardened mud or 

 clay, about a foot in average thickness. The surface was 

 perfectly smooth and level when the cave was first opened, 

 except where stalagmites had formed upon it by infiltration 

 from the roof. Where stalactitic matter incrusted the 

 sides, it also extended over the bottom like a thin coat 

 of ice ; and therefore must have been deposited since the 

 mud was introduced. This mud or clay was filled with 

 fragments of bones belonging to a great variety of animals ; 

 and some of the bones exhibited marks of having been 

 gnawed. From many corroborative circumstances these 

 appearances were supposed, by the distinguished author, 

 to have been occasioned by hyenas. The bones thus preyed 



