Reliquiae diluvianae; or, observations on the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel, and on other geological phenomena, attesting the action of an universal deluge / By the Rev. William Buckland.

  • Buckland, William, 1784-1856.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reliquiae diluvianae; or, observations on the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel, and on other geological phenomena, attesting the action of an universal deluge / By the Rev. William Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stance will also explain the reason why there are no heaps of bones found on the outside of the Kirkdale cave, as described by Busbequius on the outside of the hyaenas’ dens in Anatolia; for every thing that lay without, on the antediluvian surface, must have been swept far away, and scattered by the violence of the diluvian waters; and there is no reason for believing that hyaenas, or any other animals whatever, have occupied the den subsequently to that catastrophe*. Although the evidence to prove the cave to have been inhabited as a den by successive generations of hyaenas appears thus direct, it may be as well to consider what other hypotheses can be suggested, to explain the collection of bones assembled in it. 1st. It may be said, that the various animals had entered the cave spontaneously to die, or had fled into it as a refuge from some general convulsion: but the diameter of the cave, as has been mentioned before, compared with the bulk of the elephant and rhinoceros, renders this solution impossible as to the larger animals; and with respect to the smaller, we can imagine no circumstances that would collect together, spontaneously, animals of such dissimilar habits as hyaenas, tigers, bears, wolves, foxes, horses, oxen, deer, rabbits, water- rats, mice, weasels, and birds. 2d. It may be suggested, that they were drifted in by the waters * It has been suggested further, that there is no proof that this individual cave was actually occupied at the precise point of time at which the waters began to rise, although it certainly had been so during several generations not long preceding. It may have been abandoned a short time prior to it, and at that moment have been untenanted; for modern hunters do not always find their game exactly on the same spot, nor is there any thing to prevent hyaenas as well as other wild animals from occasionally changing their quarters. Quarterly Review, Oct. 1822, p. 468.