204 The Rev. Mr. Buckland’s account of Fossil Teeth and 
It is in the highest degree curious to observe, that four of 
the genera of animals whose bones are thus widely diffused 
over the temperate, and even polar regions of the northern 
hemisphere, should at present exist only in tropical climates, 
and chiefly south of the equator ; and that the only country in 
which the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and hyaena are 
now associated, is Southern Africa. In the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of the Cape they all live and die together, as they 
formerly did in Britain ; whilst the hippopotamus is now con- 
fined exclusively to Africa, and the elephant, rhinoceros and 
hyasna are also diffused widely over the continent of Asia. 
Such are the principal facts I observed in the interior of 
the cave at Kirkdale, and such the leading conclusions that 
seem to arise from them ; and I cannot sufficiently lament 
that I was not present at its first opening, to witness the exact 
state in which it appeared, before any part of the surface of 
the mud had been disturbed. 
From the description given of the state of the bones, and 
of the mud and stalactite that accompany them, we may ex- 
tract the following detailed history of the operations that have 
successively been going on within the cave. 
ist. There appears to have been a period (and if we may 
form an estimate from the small quantity of stalagmite now 
found on the actual floor of the cave, a very short one, ) dur- 
ing which this aperture in the rock existed, but was not 
It is not unlikely that, in this antediluvian period, England was connected with the 
Continent, and that the excavation of the shallow channel of the Straits of Dover, 
and of a considerable portion of that part of the German ocean which lies between 
the east coast of England and the mouths of the Elbe and Rhine, may have been the 
effect of diluvial denudation. The average depth of all this tract of water is said to 
be less than thirty fathoms. 
