DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
41 
animals they fed on, all lived and died not far from the spot where 
the remains are found. 
The accumulation of these bones, then, appears to have been a 
long process, going on during a succession of years, whilst all the 
animals in question were natives of this country. The general 
dispersion of bones of the same animals through the diluvian gravel 
of high latitudes, over great part of the northern hemisphere, shows 
that the period in which they inhabited these regions was that imme¬ 
diately preceding the formation of this gravel, and that they perished 
by the same waters which produced it. M. Cuvier has moreover 
ascertained that the fossil elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and 
hymna, belong to species now unknown; and as there is no evidence 
that they have at any time, subsequent to the formation of the 
diluvium, existed in these regions, we may conclude that the period, 
at which the bones of these extinct species were introduced into the 
cave at Kirkdale, was antediluvian. Had these species ever re¬ 
established themselves in the northern portions of the world since 
the deluge, it is probable their remains would have been found, like 
those of the ox, horse, deer, hog, &c. preserved in the postdiluvian 
accumulations of gravel, sand, silt, mud, and peat, which are referable 
to causes still in operation, and which, by careful examination of their 
relations to the adjacent country, can be readily distinguished from 
those which are of diluvian origin. 
The teeth and fragments of bones above described seem to have 
lain a long time scattered irregularly over the bottom of the den, and 
to have been continually accumulating until the introduction of the 
sediment in which they are now imbedded, and to the protection of 
which they owe that high state of preservation they possess. Those 
