56 
OTHER CAVES IN ENGLAND. 
manner in which the bones of antediluvian animals may have been 
accumulated by falling into similar fissures, which are now filled up 
with diluvial mud and pebbles; for if fissures existed (as they un¬ 
doubtedly did) on the antediluvian face of the earth in much greater 
abundance than since that grand aqueous revolution, which has 
entirely filled up so many of them with its detritus, there is no reason 
why the then existing animals should not have fallen into them and 
perished, as modern animals do in the comparatively few cavities 
that remain still open in our limestone districts: and when we con¬ 
sider that it is the habit of graminivorous animals to be constantly 
traversing the surface of the ground in every direction in pursuit of 
food, it is obvious that they are subject in a greater degree than those 
which are carnivorous to the perpetual danger of falling into any 
fissure or imperfectly closed chasm that may lie in their way; and in 
this circumstance we see an explanation of the comparatively rare 
occurrence of the remains of beasts of prey in the osseous breccia of 
the antediluvian fissures, although they also perished in them, occa¬ 
sionally as the dogs do at this day in the open fissure at Duncombe 
Park. 
Many of the arguments arising from the detail of facts we have 
been describing in Yorkshire are applicable to the illustration of 
analogous phenomena, where the evidence of their history is less com¬ 
plete. In our own country there are seven other instances of bones 
similarly deposited in caverns, the origin of some of which, though 
not before satisfactorily made out, becomes evident as a corollary from 
the proofs afforded by the cave at Kirkdale; these are in the counties 
of Somerset, Derby, Devon, and Glamorgan. 
