Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 1.djvu/331

 CHAP. VI. at all depths, from the surface down to the rock (said to have been partially covered by a thin layer of stalagmite under the mud), in the midst of the stalagmitic upper crust, and, as Dr. Buckland expresses it, sticking through it like the legs of pigeons through a pie crust, lay multitudes of bones, of the following animals:—

The hyænas' bones and teeth were very numerous; probably 200 or 300 individuals had left their bodies in this cave: remains of the ox were very abundant: the elephants' teeth were mostly of very young animals: teeth of hippopotamus and rhinoceros were scarce; those of water-rats very abundant.

The bones were almost all broken by simple fracture, but in such a manner as to indicate the action of hyænas teeth, and to resemble the appearance of recent bones broken and gnawed by the living Cape hyaena; they were distributed "as in a dog-kennel," having clearly been much disturbed, so that elephants, oxen, deer, water-rats, &c., were indiscriminately mixed; and large bones were found in the narrowest parts of the cavern. The peculiar excrement (album græcum) of hyænas was not rare—the teeth of hyænas were found in the jaws of every age, from the milk tooth of the young animal to the old grinders worn to the stump: some of the bones are polished in a peculiar manner, as if by the trampling of animals.

This evidence of the former occupation of Kirkdale Cave as a den of hyænas acquires much force by comparing the fragmentary state of the bones of oxen, hares, &c., in it, with the far more complete condition of the same animals in other caves, which, like Banwell, contained few or no relics of hyaena, and with the productions of Kent's Hole, which are similar in all respects