DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
43 
corollary, that they also inhabited all those other regions of the 
northern hemisphere in which similar bones have been found under 
precisely the same circumstances, not mineralised, but simply in the 
state of grave bones imbedded in loam, or clay, or gravel, over great 
part of northern Europe, as well as North America and Siberia. 
The catastrophe producing this gravel appears to have been the last 
event that has operated generally to modify the surface of the earth, 
and the few local and partial changes that have succeeded it, such as 
the formation of deltas, terraces, tufa, torrent-gravel and peat-bogs, 
all conspire to show, that the period of their commencement was 
subsequent to that at which the diluvium was formed # . 
* It was stated in describing the locality of the cave at Kirkdale, and on comparing 
it with the fact of its containing the remains of large and small aquatic animals, that there 
was probably a lake in this part of the country at the period when they inhabited it; 
and this hypothesis is rendered probable by the form and disposition of the hills that still 
encircle the vale ofPickering. (See Map, Plate I.) 
Inclosed on the south, the west, north-west, and north, by the lofty ranges of the 
Wolds, the Howardian hills, the Hambleton hills, and Eastern Moorlands, the waters of 
this vale must either run eastward to Filey Bay, or inland towards York; and such is the 
superior elevation of the strata along the coast, that the sources of the Derwent, rising 
almost close to the sea, near Scarborough and Filey, are forced to run west and southward 
fifty miles inland away from the sea, till falling into the Ouse, they finally reach it by 
turning again eastward through the Humber. The only outlet by which this drainage is 
accomplished is the gorge at New Malton; and though it is not possible to ascertain what 
was the precise extent of this antediluvian lake, or how much of the low districts, now 
constituting the Yale of Pickering, may have been excavated by the same diluvian waters 
that produced the gorge, it is obvious, that without the existence of this gorge, much of 
the district within it would be laid under water; and it is not till within these few years 
that a large tract of this land has been recovered from a state of swamp and marsh by an 
artificial canal, called the Muston Drainage, which runs inland from the sea westward 
along the valley of the Derwent, from Muston, near Filey Bay, to the gorge of New 
Malton; it is equally obvious, that this gorge is referable to the agency of diluvial de¬ 
nudation, the ravages of which have not, perhaps, left a single portion of the antediluvian 
G 2 
