Bones discovered in a cave at Kirkdale, in TorksKire. 215 
countries, added to the identity of species and undecayed 
state of the animal remains which they contain, render the 
argument from analogy perfect, to show that the bones at 
Oreston are not coeval, and have only an accidental connec- 
tion with the rock in the cavities of which they were found. 
It by no means follows, from the certainty of the bones 
having been dragged in by beasts of prey to the small ca- 
vern at Kirkdale, that those of similar animals must have 
been introduced in all other cases in the same manner ; for, 
as these animals were the antediluvian inhabitants of the 
countries in which the caves occur, it is possible, that some 
may have retired into them to die, others have fallen into the 
fissures by accident and there perished, and others have been 
washed in by the diluvial waters. By some one or more of 
these three latter hypotheses, we may explain those cases in 
w'hich the bones are few in number and unbroken, the caverns 
large and the fissures extending upwards to the surface ; 
but where they bear marks of having been lacerated by beasts 
of prey, and where the cavern is small, and the number 
of bones and teeth so great, and so disproportionate to each 
other as in the cave at Kirkdale, the only adequate expla- 
nation is, that they were collected by the agency of wild beasts. 
We shall show hereafter, that in the case of the German 
caves, where the quantity of bones is greater than could have 
been supplied by ten times the number of carcases which 
the caves, if crammed to the full, could ever have contained, 
they were the bones of bears that lived and died in them 
during successive generations. 
We may now proceed to consider how far the circum- 
