Bones discovered in a cave at Kirkdale y in Yorkshire. 175 
ascertained : into this question (which is one of considerable 
difficulty in geology) it is foreign to my present purpose to 
enquire, any farther than to state that they were neither pro- 
duced, enlarged, or diminished by the presence of the animals 
whose bones we now find in them. 
The abundance of such caverns in the lime-stone of the 
vicinity of Kirkdale, is evident from the fact of the engulf- 
ment of several of the rivers above enumerated in the course 
of their passage across it from the eastern moorlands to the 
vale of Pickering ; and it is important to observe, that the 
elevation of the Kirkdale cave, above the bed of the Hodge 
Beck, exceeding 100 feet, excludes the possibility of our 
attributing the muddy sediment we shall find it to contain, 
to any land flood or extraordinary rise of the waters of that 
or any other now existing river. 
It was not till the summer of 1821, that the existence of 
any animal remains, or of the cavern containing them, had 
been suspected. At this time, in continuing the operations of 
a large quarry along the brow of the slope just mentioned, 
(see Plate XVI. fig. 1. ) the workmen accidentally intersected 
the mouth of a long hole or cavern, closed externally with 
rubbish, and overgrown with grass and bushes. As this 
rubbish was removed before any competent person had ex- 
amined it, it is not certain whether it was composed of diluvial 
gravel and rolled pebbles, or was simply the debris that had 
fallen from the softer portions of the strata that lay above it ; 
the workmen, however, who removed it, and some gentlemen 
who saw it, assured me, that it was composed of gravel and 
sand. In the interior of the cave there was not a single rolled 
pebble, nor one bone, or fragment of bone, that bears the 
