DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE. 
181 
small creatures to pieces, break their bones, and scatter 
them all over the den ? Supposing that the hyaenas would 
make a prey of a mouse as well as of an elephant, and feed 
on a rat as greedily as on a rhinoceros, Can we imagine 
that they would take the trouble to convey such minute 
creatures into their den ? Or, if we grant that a hysena 
might scamper home with a couple of rats or mice in his 
mouth. Would a creature of such ' omnivorous appetite ' 
have patience to dissect them, to break their bones, to gnaw 
them, and to suck out the marrow ? Would he not rather 
snap them up like shrimps, at one morsel ; and leave us no 
chance of finding any of their relics in the den, except as 
forming a component part of the balls of album gracum ? 
The great quantity of the bones of these small animals 
mixed with the mud, warrants us to say, that both the mud 
and the bones have been introduced together. 
For receiving the hypothesis which I have advanced, it 
is not necessary to adopt, to its full extent, the theory pro- 
posed in the Geological Survey, or, that all the secondary 
rocks were formed at the time of the Mosaic Deluge. It is 
sufficient to admit, that, while the diluvian waters covered 
the present strata, there were open fissures in the limestone, 
which were afterwards closed up by the deposition of the 
alluvial covering. 
This hypothesis has some important advantages over the 
Den Theory, besides those already noticed ; especially as it 
explains, in a great measure, all other phenomena of this 
kind, as well as what have been witnessed at Kirkdale. It 
accounts for the deposits of such animal remains in the al- 
luvium, — and for those also which are found in rocks, in 
situations which no flight of fancy could transform into 
dens ; which collections Professor Buckland himself allows 
to have been drifted in by water. Even the phenomena at 
Pallion Quarry, in the magncsian limestone, may be ex- 
