OSSEOUS BRECCIA. 



309 



Pachydermata, — The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and 

 horse. 



Rodeniia or Gnawers. — The hare, rabbit, rat, water-rat, and 

 mouse. 



Ruminant Animals. — The ox and fragments and bones of three 

 species of deer. 



Birds. — The raven, pigeon, lark, snipe, and a small species of 

 duck. 



From the great number of bones of the hyena found in this cave, 

 Professor Buckland infers that it had long been the habitation of 

 these animals. It is their ascertained habit, partly to devour the 

 bones of their prey ; they also devour the dead bodies of their own 

 species ; like wolves they are gregarious, and hunt in packs. From 

 the habits of the hyena, he explains the occurrence of the remains 

 of large herbivorous quadrupeds, like the elephant, in so low a cave 

 as that of Kirkdale ; they have been dragged into it by these vora- 

 cious animals. Several English caverns have since been explored. 

 In some of them there are bones both of herbivorous and carnivorous 

 animals similar to those in the Kirkdale Cove. These caves are 

 described in Professor Buckland's valuable work, entitled Reliquice 

 Diluviance. 



That the caverns in which the bones of carnivorous animals are 

 found in such prodigious quantities, were the retreats of some of these 

 animals, cannot be doubted. Many circumstances, described in the 

 account of the Kirkdale Cave, can be explained only by admitting 

 it. There are, however, other circumstances particularly in the 

 caves of Germany, which would imply, that part of the bones be- 

 long to animals that had fallen through fissures, which formerly open- 

 ed into these caverns, or that the bones themselves had been carried 

 by currents of water, through subterranean passages into these cav- 



I erns, as before explained in the present chapter. In the cave at 



j Gaylenreuth there are rounded fragments of limestone, intermixed 

 with the bones ; and the entrance of some of the caverns is much too 

 small to have admitted the animals whose bones are found in them. 

 I think it is also probable that a violent convulsion of nature, as a ri- 

 sing deluge and the fierce war of elements without, might have driv- 

 en, under the strong impulse of alarm, numerous animals of differ- 

 ent species into the same caverns, where they devoured each other, 



I and their bones have been intermixed with those of the former in- 

 habitants. The entrances of many of the caverns, and the caverns 

 themselves, were doubdess formerly more lofty than at present; 

 they have been gradually lowered by the subsidence of the upper 

 strata. Indeed, it is admitted that the caverns and grottos in the 

 neighbourhood of Adelsberg, have occasioned numerous depressions 

 of the surface. Such an effect must generally take place, in a great- 



i €r or less degree, with the strata over caverns. 



