202 The Rev. Mr. Buckland's account of Fossil Teeth and 
preservation they possess. Those that lay long uncovered 
at the bottom of the den, have undergone a decay propor- 
tionate to the time of their exposure ; others that have lain 
only a short time before the introduction of the diluvian mud, 
have been preserved by it almost from even incipient decom- 
position. 
Thus the phenomena of this cave seem referable to a 
period in which the world was inhabited by land animals, 
bearing a general resemblance to those now existing, before 
the last inundation of the earth ; but so completely has the 
violence of that tremendous convulsion destroyed and remo- 
delled the form of its antediluvian surface, that it is only in 
caverns that have been protected from its ravages, that we 
may hope to find undisturbed evidence of events in the period 
immediately preceding it. The bones already described, and 
the stalagmite formed before the introduction of the diluvial 
mud, are what I consider to be the products of the period in 
question. It was indeed probable, before the discovery of this 
cave, from the abundance in which the remains of similar 
species occur in superficial gravel beds, which cannot be re- 
ferred to any other than a diluvial origin, that such animals 
were the antediluvian inhabitants of this country ; but the 
proof was imperfect, as it has been said they might have 
been drifted or floated hither by the waters, from warmer 
latitudes : but the facts developed in this charnel house of the 
antediluvian forests of Yorkshire, show that there was a long 
succession of years in which these animals had been the prey 
of the hyaenas, which like themselves at that time, must have 
inhabited these regions of the earth ; and it is in the diluvial 
wreck occurring in such latitudes, that similar bones have been 
