Description of the Cave of Kirk&ah in Yorkshire. 6P 
cases even of the hyaenas themselves were eaten up by their sur- 
vivors. 
To the probability of these inferences, Professor Buckland 
has added very greatly, by an inquiry info the habits of mo- 
dern hyaenas, the largest of which is one-third less than the fos- 
sil hyaena. It appears, therefore, extremely probable, that the 
animals had been dragged into the cave for food by the hyaenas, 
who caught their prey in the immediate vicinity of their den; 
and as they could not have carried it home from any very great 
distance, it follows that the animals upon whom they fed 
lived and died not far from the spot where their remains are 
now found *. 
Considering these animals as natives of this country, Profes- 
sor Buckland regards the accumulation of their bones as a long 
process, going on during a succession of years ; and he supposes 
that the accumulation was considerably advanced before the in- 
troduction of the sediment in which they are imbedded, and by 
which they have been so well preserved. This, indeed, seems 
scarcely to admit of a doubt, as the bones which had been long 
uncovered at the bottom of the den, have undergone a decay 
proportional to the time of their exposure, while others that 
have lain only a short time before the introduction of the di- 
luvian sediment, have been preserved by its means almost from 
incipient decomposition. 
From an examination of the present condition of the bones,* 
the mud, and the stalactite, Professor Buckland draws the fol- 
lowing inferences respecting the operations that have been going 
on in the cavern. 
* Professor Buckland has stated other two hypotheses : 1st, That the animals 
may have entered the cave spontaneously to die, or fled Into it as a refuge from 
some general, convulsion ; and, 2dly, That their carcases may either have been 
drifted in entire by the waters of a flood, or the bones alone drifted in after their se- 
paration from the flesh. Both these opinions are, however, excluded in a great 
measure by the small size of the cave, which could not have admitted such ani- 
mals as the elephant and rhinoceros. Had the bones been drifted in singly, they 
would have been mixed, with gravel, and at least slightly rolled on their passage; 
and it would still be unexplained why they were split and broken in pieces, and 
why there is such a disproportion between the numbers of the teeth and the bones. 
