2 
ACCOUNT OF FOSSIL TEETH AND BONES 
our planet at a period antecedent to the last great convulsion that has 
affected its surface, and affording one of the most complete and satis¬ 
factory chains of consistent circumstantial evidence I have ever met 
with in the course of my geological investigations. 
As I shall have frequent occasion to make use of the word dilu¬ 
vium, it may be necessary to premise, that I apply it to those extensive 
and general deposits of superficial loam and gravel, which appear to 
have been produced by the last great convulsion that has affected our 
planet; and that with regard to the indications afforded by geology 
of such a convulsion, I entirely coincide with the views of M. Cuvier, 
in considering them as bearing undeniable evidence of a recent and 
transient inundation. On these grounds I have felt myself fully 
justified in applying the epithet diluvial, to the results of this great 
convulsion; of antediluvial , to the state of things immediately pre¬ 
ceding it; and postdiluvial, or alluvial, to that which succeeded it, and 
has continued to the present time: I forbear to enter in this work 
into any discussion on the state or circumstances of the animal remains 
that occur in the solid strata that compose the surface of the earth, as 
it would be foreign to my immediate object, and as this subject, to¬ 
gether with that of the days mentioned in the Mosaic account of 
the creation, has been already considered in my inaugural lecture 
published at Oxford in 1820. 
In detailing the observations I am about to make on Kirkdale, I 
propose, first, to submit a short account of the geological position and 
relations of its immediate neighbourhood; to proceed, in the next 
place, to a description of the cavern itself; then to enter into a par¬ 
ticular enumeration of the animal remains inhumed in it, and the very 
