78 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. III. 
the Royal Society for selecting the best granite for the 
new London Bridge.” 
In another letter to the same friend he writes, two years 
later :— 
“ I have just received a gold snuff-box set with mosaic 
from the Emperor of Russia, in acknowledgment of a 
copy I sent him of my ‘ Reliquiae Diluvianae.’ I am just 
returned,” he continues, “ from exploring two more hyenas’ 
dens in Devonshire. They were less populous than 
Kirkdale, but have abundance of splinter and a fair supply 
of toes and teeth. I found the teeth of rhinoceros in 
addition to hyenas, bears, and tigers, which have been 
noticed there by Trevelyan, and found also a flint knife of 
the same kind as the one I have from Paviland, showing 
both these caves to have been inhabited by people who 
used such knives, i.e. aboriginal Britons. In the other at 
Chudleigh I delighted Lord Clifford by finding, under a 
thick crust of virgin stalagmite, bears and hyenas of 
enormous size, and plenty of splinters and gnaw r ed frag¬ 
ments in a bed of mud more than five feet deep and of 
which I did not reach the bottom. I passed for a conjurer 
by telling them where the bones would lie before the crust 
was touched, and the more so as in three subsequent 
experiments hardly any bones were found; it was the 
finest proof possible of the verity of my theory, for it was 
precisely in the spot where, according to that theory, they 
ought to occur in the greatest abundance that they were 
so found, according to the entire convictions and con¬ 
version of Lord Clifford, who had before been persuaded 
by G. Penn to be an unbeliever in my book. Sir T. 
Acland was with me in my examinations of both these 
caves, and dug as if he had been member for Cornwall 
rather than for people who, like my constituents, live above 
ground.” 
When the “ Reliquiae Diluvianae ” was published, the lime 
caverns at Dudley had never been opened; but as the 
