Bones discovered in a cave at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire. 203 
found buried, in the state of grave bones, over great part of 
northern Europe, as well as North America and Siberia. The 
catastrophe producing this gravel, appears to have been the 
last event that has operated generally to modify the surface 
of the earth, and the few local and partial changes that have 
succeeded it, such as the formation of deltas, terraces, tufa, 
torrent-gravel and peat-bogs, all conspire to show, that the 
period of their commencement was subsequent to that at 
which the diluvium was formed.* 
* It was stated in describing the locality of the cave at Kirkdale, and on compar- 
ing it with the fact of its containing the remains of large and small aquatic animals, 
that there was probably a lake in this part of the country at the period when they 
inhabited it ; and this hypothesis is rendered probable by the form and disposition of 
the hills that still encircle the Vale of Pickering. (See Map, Plate XV.) 
Inclosed on the south, the west, north-west, and north, by the lofty ranges of the 
Wolds, the Howardian hills, the Hambleton hills, and Eastern Moorlands, the waters 
of this vale must either run eastward to Filey Bay, or inland towards York ; and such 
is the superior elevation of the strata along the coast, that the sources of the Der- 
went, rising almost close to the sea, near Scarborough and Filey, are forced to run 
west and southward fifty miles inland away from the sea, till falling into the Ouse, 
they finally reach it by turning again eastward through the Humber. The only 
outlet by which this drainage is accomplished, is the gorge at New Malton ; and 
though it is not possible to ascertain what was the precise extent of this antedilu- 
vian lake, or how much of the low districts, now constituting the Vale of Pickering, 
may have been excavated by the same diluvian waters that produced the gorge ; it 
is obvious, that without the existence of this gorge, much of the district within 
it would be laid under water ; and it is equally obvious, that the gorge is referable 
to the agency of diluvian denudation, the ravages of which have not, perhaps, left 
a single portion of the antediluvian surface of the whole earth, which is not torn 
and re-modelled, so as to have lost all traces of the exact features it bore antecedently 
to the operations of the deluge. 
It is probable, that inland lakes were much more numerous than they are at pre- 
sent, before the excavation of the many gorges by which our modern rivers make 
their escape ; and this is consistent with the frequent occurrence of the remains of 
the hippopotamus in the diluvian gravel of England, and of various parts of Europe. 
