31^ Prof. Buckland’s Reply to Dr Fleming's Remarks 
and still less in the regular stratified clay, that is, the London* 
Clay, The case described by Mr Trimmer is that of the brick- 
earth-pits at Brentford, which I visited last week, and where 
there is not the smallest trace of any kind of peat-bog to be seen. 
The patches of peat mentioned by Mr Trimmer in his paper, as 
being only two or three inches thick, and of small extent, were 
portions of drifted peat, or other vegetable matter that became 
lodged and entangled in the sand and gravel, at the same time 
with the bones in question. Their extent must have been very 
small, for not a particle of peat is now visible, although a larger 
section is open than existed at the time when Mr Trimmer made 
his observations. 
But even admitting: all the facts which Dr Flemino: contends 
for as to this point, and supposing it proved that the elephant, 
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hyjena, and other lost animals, have 
existed recently in Europe, and been extirpated by man, and 
that we found their remains in postdiluvian deposits of peat, and 
silt, and fresh-water marl ; they would only be in the same pre- 
dicament with the horse, the ox, the fox, the wolf, the boar, the 
beaver, and others, whose bones are common to these postdiluvial 
formations, as well as to antediluvian caves and fissures, and to 
beds of diluvial gravel : still every atom of the evidence con- 
tained in my Reliquiae Diluvianae would remain unaffected by 
this discovery, and the great and universal phenomena of dilu- 
vial deposits would still be equally inexplicable, without appeal- 
ing to the agency of a transient and general inundation of the 
Earth 
* Dr Fleming, speaking of the gradual extirpation of certain well known ani- 
mals in this country and on the continent, says, “ These changes have all taken 
place in the course of the last six or eight centuries ; in ages that have preceded, 
the same causes must haVe been in more or less active operation,” &c. In short, 
by the theory of gradual extirpation, he would explain the extinction of the lost 
species of'elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hyaena, &c. over Europe. Is it not 
incumbent on him first, to show at what period such animals as these, much too 
formidable to be overlooked, were ever known to have existed? Can he give any 
reason why hyaenas should have been extirpated at a more early period than wolves, 
had they ever existed in postdiluvian Britain ? Or is it probable, that the savage 
hordes which inhabited Germany before its occupation by the Romans, should 
have utterly destroyed such powerful animals as the elephant and rhinoceros, as 
well as the hyaena, from the impenetrable fastnesses of the great Hercynian forest, 
