DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
37 
what means the bones and teeth of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hip¬ 
popotamus, were conveyed thither (see Plate VII. fig. 1 to 6, and 8 
to 10). On the one hand, the cave is in general of dimensions so 
contracted (often not exceeding three feet in diameter), that it is 
impossible that living animals of these species could have found an 
entrance, or the entire carcases of dead ones been floated into it; 
moreover, had the bones been washed in, they would probably have 
been mixed with pebbles and rounded equably by friction, which they 
are not: on the other hand, it is foreign to the habits of the hyaena 
to prey on the larger pachydermata, their young perhaps excepted. 
JsTo other solution of the difficulty presents itself to me, than that the 
remains in question are those of individuals that died a natural death; 
for though an hyaena would neither have had strength to kill a living 
elephant or rhinoceros, or to drag home the entire carcase of a dead 
one, yet he could carry away, piecemeal, or acting conjointly with 
others, fragments of the most bulky animals that died in the course 
of nature, and thus introduce them to the inmost recesses of his 
den. 
Should it be asked why, amidst the remains of so many hundred 
animals, not a single skeleton of any kind has been found entire, we 
see an obvious answer, in the power and known habit of hyasnas to 
devour the bones of their prey; and the gnawed fragments on the 
one hand, and album graecum on the other, afford double evidence of 
their having largely gratified this natural propensity: the exception 
of the teeth and numerous small bones of the lower joints and extre¬ 
mities, that remain unbroken, (as having been without marrow and 
too hard and solid to afford inducement for mastication,) is entirely 
