Distribution of British A nimals. SOI 
and hog, have been discovered. In the caves at Plymouth, the 
skeleton and bones of all the animals already mentioned, have 
occurred, and in such circumstances as to indicate that they had 
been washed out of an open fissure by some land-flood, and de- 
posited in confusion in the neighbouring caverns. 
Professor Buckland, in his speculations concerning the anti- 
quity of those bones found in fissures, and caverns connected 
with them, conceives them to have been drifted into their pre- 
sent position by the waters of Noah's flood ; that the mud by 
which they are surrounded was a deposite from these waters ; 
and that the stalagmite, covering the whole, is post-diluvian or 
recent. Several obvious circumstances render such an opinion 
untenable, among which one may be noticed, which occurred to 
the author himself. In the cave of Wokely Hole near Wells, 
at the south-west base of the Mendip Hills, bones and teeth of 
human subjects have been found, together with a fragment of a 
sepulchral urn. The mud was here present, as well as the 
stalagmite, but the mud is declared to be 44 evidently fluviatile 
and not diluvian," and the bones 44 are very old, but not ante- 
diluvian." It appears that a subterranean river runs through 
the cave, which may have deposited the mud during its highest 
floods. But why may not the mud in the Kirkdale Cave have 
been deposited by a similar agent ? According to the state- 
ments of the Hev. Geo. Young ( Wern % Mem. iv. p. 264.), 44 it 
is not a mere fissure in the rock, as is evident from the want of 
correspondence between the opposite sides, and from the exis- 
tence of a number of rounded hollows or depressions, appearing 
in the sides, the floor, and even the roof ; resembling such wa- 
ter-worn hollows as we see in rocks, in the beds of rivers, or on 
the shores of the ocean." 
In a cave, likewise, in the Mendip Hills, at Compton Bishop, 
(Reliquiee Diluviana , p. 166.), numerous bones of foxes were 
found, and fifteen skulls extracted. In an open fissure at Dun- 
combe Park, ( lb . p. 54.), the bones of dogs, sheep, deer, goats, 
and hogs have likewise been found lodged. 
o o 
In addition to these facts, it may be added, that in the fissure 
of the gypsum at Koetritz, in Germany, described by Baron 
Schlotheim, a translation of whose paper on the subject has ap- 
peared in the Annals of Philosophy, vol. xxi. p. 17-, the remains 
