DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
33 
marks of age; they seem to have perished by a violent death in the 
vigour of life. With respect to the horns of deer that appear to have 
fallen off by necrosis, it is probable that the hyaenas found them thus 
shed, and dragged them home for the purpose of gnawing them in 
their den; and to animals so fond of bones, the spongy interior of 
horns of this kind would not be unacceptable. I found a fragment 
of stag's horn in so small a recess of the cave, that it never could have 
been introduced, unless singly, and after separation from the head; 
and near it was the molar tooth of an elephant. I have seen no re¬ 
mains of the horns of oxen, and perhaps there are none; for the bony 
portion of their interior, being of a porous spongy nature, would pro¬ 
bably have been eaten by the hyaenas, whilst the outer case, being of 
a similar composition to hair and hoofs, would not long have escaped 
total decomposition. For the same reason the horn of the rhino¬ 
ceros, being merely a mass of compacted hair-like fibres, has never 
been found fossil in gravel beds with the bones of that animal, except 
in Siberia, where it has been frozen up in ice, nor does it occur in the 
cave at Kirkdale. I have been told that sheep’s horns laid on land 
for manure will be consumed in ten or a dozen years; the calcareous 
matter of bone, being nearly allied to limestone, is the only portion of 
animal bodies that occurs in a fossil state, unless when preserved, like 
the Siberian elephant, of the same extinct species with that of Kirk¬ 
dale, by being frozen in ice, or buried in peat. 
The extreme abundance of the teeth of water rats has also been 
alluded to; and though the idea of hyaenas eating rats may appear 
ridiculous, it is consistent with the omnivorous appetite of modem 
hyaenas, and with the fact, quoted from Johnson, that they feed on 
