162 
PRESENT SURFACE OF EUROPE 
and Germany, I must refer my readers to the ‘ Ossemens Fossiles of 
Cuviera work containing more sound and philosophical reasoning 
on the early state of our planet, and a more valuable collection of 
authentic facts relating to the history of its fossil animals of the higher 
orders, than can be found in all the books that have ever yet been 
written upon the subject. 
In the conclusion of my account of Kirkdale, I stated, that its 
phenomena were decisive in establishing the fact, that animals which 
are now limited exclusively to warmer latitudes, e. g. the elephant, 
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and hyaena, were the antediluvian in¬ 
habitants of Britain, and not drifted northwards by the diluvian cur¬ 
rents from more southern or equatorial regions, as had often been 
suggested, and was never till now disproved; and I pointed out the 
inference with respect to a probable change of climate in the northern 
hemisphere, which seems to follow from this circumstance. 
Another important consequence arising directly from the inha¬ 
bited caves, and ossiferous fissures, the existence of which has been 
now shown to extend generally over Europe, is, that the present sea 
and land have not changed place; but that the antediluvian surface 
of at least a large portion of the northern hemisphere was the same 
with the present; since those tracts of dry land in which we find the 
ossiferous caves and fissures must have been dry also, when the land 
animals inhabited or fell into them, in the period immediately pre¬ 
ceding the inundation by which they were extirpated. And hence 
it follows, that wherever such caves and fissures occur, i. e. in 
the greater part of Europe, and in whatever other parts of the 
