CAVERNS AND THEIR CONTENTS. 
455 
such animals ranged over the Continent and occupied England 
at a period not very remote in comparison with the general 
history of the earth, there can be no doubt. That they were 
abundant and indigenous would seem equally certain. Whether 
dry land connected England with Europe, or whether there 
were means of which we know not, enabling the gigantic 
quadrupeds to journey from the one to the other land, it would 
be idle here to speculate ; but at any rate they lived and died 
on the banks of rivers whose beds are now in many cases 
several fathoms below the position they formerly occupied, and 
the materials of the floors of the caverns were either drifted in 
by accident, or carried thither intentionally by contemporary 
animals. 
While the caverns of Europe abound in the bones of such 
races as we have just referred to, it is extremely curious and 
interesting to find that an almost similar difference between the 
animals of the caverns and those of the green fields and forests 
existed at the antipodes. It is now several years since a num- 
ber of remarkable caverns were opened in South Australia by 
Sir W. Mitchell, and yielded a result not less remarkable than 
those of Germany and England. In them, also, we find the 
bones of carnivorous and herbivorous annuals mixed together. 
The carnivora were such as would carry dead prey into a den ; 
the herbivora were probably the common quadrupeds of the 
plains. As, however, that part of the world (Australia) is now 
peopled by kangaroos and wombats, and some herbivorous 
quadrupeds of moderate size, all having the structure called 
marsupial ,* so the caverns contain numerous carnivorous and 
herbivorous species, also marsupial, but of dimensions and pro- 
portions singularly gigantic, and all now extinct. Whether 
from some sudden or gradual destruction and replacement of 
species, or, which is much more likely, from some slow modifi- 
cation resulting from altered conditions of existence, there would 
appear to have been, both in Australia and in England, a state of 
the land vastly more favourable for the existence of the largest 
quadrupeds at the time just before the historic period, than 
has happened since, or that we have any evidence of at an 
earlier date. For some reason unknown, this time coincided 
with such a position of the entrances of caverns as enabled 
the wild and powerful carnivora to make use of them, and 
drag thither their prisoners. This period was not a brief 
one, and may have commenced very long ago, when the dif- 
* By marsupial is meant that the young are brought into the world in a 
very imperfectly developed state, and are long afterwards carried about by 
the mother in a marsupium, or natural pouch. It is conjectured that the 
rarity of water in Australia, and the long distances animals are obliged to 
travel without this necessary of life, may be reasons for this provision. 
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