DR. BUCKLAND’S VIEWS. 
85 
prey, and of these, there was one remarkable for fe¬ 
rocity and strength,—the hyaena. Hyaenas of the 
present day are known to be unsparing in their 
habits, their physical powers are prodigious, they 
drag huge carcasses to their dens, attack success¬ 
fully the largest quadrupeds, and even at times 
sacrifice the aged and young of their own species. 
The acuteness of Dr. Buckland has opened to the 
world a new and most interesting view of the 
generality of fossiliferous caverns,—he discovered 
convincing evidence that they were employed by 
hyaenas as their domiciles, and that the majority 
of exuviae found in them had been submitted to 
the action of their terrific jaws after being drag¬ 
ged to these abodes. In the Kirkdale cave he 
discovered proofs that their predatory powers had 
not been limited moreover to the destruction of 
herbivorous creatures, but, that like hyaenas of 
our own times, they had not spared their own 
kind. I have found it a most interesting circum¬ 
stance to trace the resemblance of the facts 
displayed by my newly discovered cave, to those 
offered by the cave of Kirkdale, and must here 
observe, that they are strangely correspondent. 
Perhaps however one difference should be noted, 
namely, the probability that more than one preda¬ 
tory animal appropriated our cave as a place of 
habitual resort. The circumstance of a double or 
triple entrance leaves room to admit this, and, as one 
proof of the employment of the cave as an hyaena’s 
den is gathered from the vast quantity of their bones 
and teeth which was collected there, (as though a 
generation of the tribe had in process of time been 
consigned to a common grave) there is a similar 
indication in respect of the fox, since the remains of 
this beast are next in abundance to those of the 
hyaena, and were congregated in one chamber of 
the cavern. 
