DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
19 
every specimen I have collected or seen of the osseous breccia, there 
are teeth or broken fragments of the bones of this little animal mixed 
with, and adhering to the fragments of all the larger bones. These 
rats may be supposed to have abounded on the edge of the lake, which 
I have shown probably existed at that time in this neighbourhood: 
there are also the jaw of a hare, and a few teeth and bones of rabbits 
and mice. (Plate X. fig. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, Plate XI. fig. 7, 8, 9,10, 
and Plate XIII. fig. 8.) 
Besides the teeth and bones already described, the cave contained 
also fragments of horns of at least two species of deer. (See Plate IX. 
fig. 3 , 4, and 5.) One of these resembles the horn of the common 
stag or red deer, the circumference of the base measuring 9f inches, 
which is about the size of our largest stag. A second (fig. 4) mea¬ 
sures 7f inches at the same part, and both have two antlers, that rise 
very near the base. In a smaller species the lowest antler is 3 -}> inches 
above the base, the circumference of which is 8 inches. (See fig. 5.) 
No horns are found entire, but fragments only, and these apparently 
gnawed to pieces like the bones: their lower extremity nearest the 
head is that which has generally escaped destruction: and it is a 
curious fact, that this portion of all the horns I have seen from the 
cave shows, by the rounded state of the base, that they had fallen off 
by absorption or necrosis, and been shed from the head on which they 
grew, and not broken off by violence. 
It must already appear probable, from the facts above described, 
particularly from the comminuted state and apparently gnawed con¬ 
dition of the bones, that the cave at Kirkdale was, during a long 
succession of years, inhabited as a den by hyaenas, and that they 
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