172! FOSSIL REMAINS OF QUADRUPEDS, &C. 
to compare my sentiments on the subject with those of 
others, particularly with those of the Reverend Professor 
Buckland, whose interesting account of the Kirkdale Ca- 
vern, and its contents, has been published in the Philoso- 
phical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 
Knowing, from my correspondence with the learned Pro- 
fessor, that his sentiments were at variance with mine, I 
wished, before writing my second paper, to have a full view 
of his statements and reasonings — that his hypothesis and 
mine might be compared with more advantage. 
The Reverend and Learned Professor is decidedly of 
opinion, that Kirkdale Cavern must have been, at the De- 
luge, and for ages before it, a den of hyjenas, whose re- 
mains form so large a proportion of its contents ; and that 
the other relics entombed there belonged to animals, or 
portions of animals, which the hya?nas had dragged into 
the cavern to devour or to gnaw. He supposes that the 
Deluge, to which he seems to ascribe only a very partial 
change of the earth's surface, closed up the cave, with the 
bones contained in it, after depositing over the latter a 
thick sediment of mud, which he conceives to have been 
the means of their preservation. The opinion which I 
hold, in opposition to this theory, and which is already 
published in the Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast, 
is, that, as immense numbers of animals of all descriptions 
were drowned by the Deluge, vast masses of animal matter ^ 
must have been floated or drifted about in all directions, 
and quantities of this matter descending to the bottom, 
while the diluvian waters yet covered the present strata, 
might be drifted into such chasms or fissures of rocks as 
were then open, great part of which might be subsequently 
covered up by the deposition of the alluvial beds at the 
final retiring of the waters ; and that, as the bones and 
flesh of the animals, by being long tossed about, would be 
