78 
THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF 
they might also in this case have been expected to be more or less 
rolled, and to have lost their angles by friction, which does not appear 
to be the fact. Another objection also arises from this circumstance, 
that the bones of dead animals exposed on the surface of the earth, 
without any protection of soil or gravel, are soon destroyed by minute 
insects and continual atmospheric changes; and were it not so, the 
world would by this time have been spread over most abundantly 
with the bones of the myriads of animals that have died on its surface, 
and received no burial ever since the period of the last retreat of the 
diluvial waters. 
3. The third hypothesis is that which I propose as most probable, 
viz. that the animals had fallen during the antediluvian period into 
the open fissures, and there perishing, had remained undisturbed in 
the spot on which they died, till drifted forwards by the diluvian 
waters to their present place in the lowest vaultings with which these 
fissures had communication. This explanation is supported by the 
strong fact, that animals at this day do fall continually into the few 
fissures that are still open, and that carnivorous as well as grami¬ 
nivorous animals lie in nearly entire skeletons in the open fissure at 
Buncombe Park, each in the spot on which it actually perished, upon 
the different ledges and landing places that occur in the course of its 
descent, and from which, if a second deluge were admitted to this 
fissure, it could only drift them downwards, and with them the loose 
angular fragments amidst which they now lie, to the lowest chambers 
in which the bottom of this fissure terminates. The teeth marks of 
the weasel, and the pitted surface of the tibia, will on this hypothesis 
