40 
ACCOUNT OF FOSSIL TEETH AND BONES 
respect to the smaller, we can imagine no circumstances that would 
collect together, spontaneously, animals of such dissimilar habits as 
hyaenas, tigers, bears, wolves, foxes, horses, oxen, deer, rabbits, water- 
rats, mice, weasels, and birds. 
2d. It may be suggested, that they were drifted in by the waters 
of a flood: if so, either the carcases floated in entire ; or the bones 
alone were drifted in after separation from the flesh: in the first of 
these cases, the larger carcases, as we have already stated, could not 
have entered at all; and of the smaller ones, the cave could not have 
contained a sufficient number to supply one-twentieth part of the 
teeth and bones; moreover, the bones would not have been broken 
to pieces, nor in different stages of decay. And had they been washed 
in by a succession of floods, we should have had a succession of beds 
of sediment and stalactite, and the cave would have been filled up by 
the second or third repetition of such an operation as that which in¬ 
troduced the single stratum of mud, which alone occurs in it. On 
the other hypothesis, that they were drifted in after separation from 
the flesh, they would have been mixed with gravel, and at least 
slightly rolled on their passage; and it would still remain to be shown 
by what means they were split and broken to pieces, and the dispro¬ 
portion created which exists between the numbers of the teeth and 
bones. They could not have fallen in through the fissures, for these 
are closed upwards in the substance of the rock, and do not reach to 
the surface. 
The 3rd, and only remaining hypothesis that occurs to me is, that 
they were dragged in for food by the hyaenas, who caught their prey 
in the immediate vicinity of their den; and as they could not have 
dragged it home from any very great distances, it follows, that the 
