THE BONES AT ORESTON. 
77 
on the antediluvian surface of the earth, till they were washed in at 
the deluge ? Or, 3, were they derived from the animals that had 
fallen into the open antediluvian fissures, and there perishing, re¬ 
mained as entire skeletons in the spots on which they died, till they 
were drifted on further by the diluvian waters into the lowest recesses 
and under-vaultings with which these fissures had communication, 
and there mixed up, in irregular heaps, with mud, pebbles, and 
angular fragments of limestone, all falling down together with them 
to the places of their present interment, and producing in this 
short transit that quantity of fracture to which they have been sub¬ 
mitted ? 
1. On the first of these hypotheses, had they been drowned, and 
the carcases drifted in by the diluvian waters, we should have found 
the skeletons more entire, and the bones less broken and less con¬ 
fusedly mixed together than they are; and we should neither have 
had the marks of nibbling by the weasels’ teeth on the bones of the 
wolf and horse, nor the hollow pits arising from partial decay on one 
surface only of the tibia of the ox; for neither of these effects could 
have been produced on bones surrounded with a bed of mud. 
2. To the second hypothesis, that they had lain as dead bones on 
the antediluvian surface till they were drifted from thence into the 
fissures, I would reply, that in a land inhabited as this was by wolves 
and hyaenas, it is not likely that any carcases would have lain long 
on the surface without at least the softer portions of the bones being 
eaten off by the hyaenas, and thus we should have found them lacerated 
rather than perfect, in the place to which they have since been drifted; 
