232 Dr Fleming on the Geological Deluge. 
and even larks, — -animals, which to a hungry hysena, would not 
be a mouthful. But the difficulty increases when we consider, 
that, if the evidence is conclusive to prove that the hysena carried 
in the bones of the elephant and rhinoceros, and reduced them 
to fragments, it equally proves that the small bones of these ani- 
mals were carried in by the same agent ; nay, more, that the 
hysena which gnawed the bones of an elephant, condescended 
to pick the flesh from a mouse, and separately break its jaws and 
legs. This would prove too much. 
The circumstance of Professor Buckland discovering some 
rounded pieces or balls, which he considers as the album grsecum 
or fecal matter of the former inmates of the den, at first sight 
strengthens his conjecture. Mr Young says, that, “ having ob- 
served some pieces of bones nearly in the same state, I am not 
without suspicion that the whole may be portions of bone, de- 
composed in the cavern, and reduced to their present form by a 
mixture of water and other ingredients.” Without venturing 
to give an opinion respecting this disputed matter, I may add, 
that, even viewing it as the fecal matter of hyaenas, it too could be 
carried in by a flood as easily as the os calcis of a water-rat, the 
jaw of a mouse, the ulna of a lark, or the shoulder-blade of a 
small duck. The evidence proving the Kirkdale cave to have 
been an antediluvian den, thus seems, in all its parts, so defi- 
cient in precision, as to warrant the rejection of that hypothesis 
it has been produced to support. 
In several caves (some in such circumstances occur in the 
neighbourhood of Kirkdale) the mud does not contain any or- 
ganic remains. In such cases, the flood must haveffieen truly 
local, or passed through caverns destitute of the skeletons of wild 
beasts. 
Though the mud in some caves is continuous, in other cases 
it is distinctly stratified, intimating its introduction to the cave 
at different intervals. tc In one large vault at Oreston, where 
the quantity of diluvium is very great, it is stratified, or rather 
sorted and divided into laminae of sand, earth, and clay, varying 
in fineness, but all referable to the diluvial washings of the ad- 
jacent country. It is also partially interspersed with small frag- 
ments of clay-slate and quartz.” — (Eel. DU. 70.) 
The last circumstance which I shall notice connected with the 
