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are, therefore, required in a matter-of-fact age like the 
present, to produce positive proof of the truth of our asser- 
tion that such a different order of things to what we now 
see around us, and so contrary to what our unassisted reason 
would lead us to infer, has really once existed. Now this 
evidence is supplied by our local museums, in which 
Geological specimens accidentally discovered find a resting 
place and a record ; and which, but for such valuable deposi- 
tories, would in numerous instances be neglected and lost. In 
the majority of cases the individuals who first disinter these 
enduring records of remote ages are unable to appreciate 
their real value, and it is therefore to accident alone that 
the circumstance of their existence becomes public, for it is a 
fact that nearly all our most important discoveries regarding 
the primaeval animals of this country have been the result 
of accident. To such I would refer the discovery of fragments 
of the lower jaw of a monkey, at Kyson, in Suffolk, in 1839 ; 
at Northcliff, in Yorkshire, in 1829, of portions of a skeleton 
of an enormous species of lion or tiger ; at Newbourn, 
in Suffolk, in 1839, of the teeth of a species of leopard. 
To the same accidental discovery in the Stonesfield slate of 
Oxford, and the Eocene sand at Kyson, of two or three 
small jaws, we owe the evidence that marsupial animals, 
now only found in America and Australia, were not only 
once indigenous to Britain, but the first indications of mammal 
life on our 'planet. To the accidental breaking in of a 
limestone cavern on the roadside near Pickering, in 1825, 
we owe the discovery of the former existence of the elephant, 
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and hyaena, in the East Biding of 
Yorkshire. By mere accident the labourers in a brick-field 
at Wortley demonstrated the former existence of the hippo- 
potamus, elephant, and gigantic ox, in the valley of the Aire. 
In the cutting of a drain at Cowthorpe, near TVetherby, the 
fact was discovered that the gigantic deer or Irish elk, was 
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