The remains of the animals were incredibly abundant, when the small space in which they were packed was taken into consideration. Those of the hyæna are estimated by Dr. Buckland as belonging to between two or three hundred individuals of all ages. The lion and the cave-bear, the wild boar, the hippopotamus (Fig. 79) an extinct kind of elephant (_E. antiquus_), and the rhinoceros named by Dr. Falconer _R. hemitœchus_, the reindeer, and Irish elk are also represented, but the species of most common occurrence are the bison and the horse. With a few exceptions all the bones with marrow were broken, and scarred by teeth, while the solid and marrowless were more or less perfect. [Illustration: FIG. 79.--Molar of Hippopotamus. (Buckland.)] Dr. Buckland’s method of solving the problem of the introduction of remains of so many and different animals into so small a space, is a model of scientific analysis. He argues from the abundance of the remains of the hyæna, and from the correspondence of their teeth with the marks on the bones, and from the quantity of their coprolites, that the cave was inhabited by many generations of those animals, and that the gnawed fragments were relics of their prey. The hyænas of the present day inhabit caves strewn with the bones of their prey, which are crushed by their powerful jaws into the same form as those of Kirkdale. He further demonstrated the truth of his conclusion by the crucial experiment of subjecting the leg-bone of an ox to a spotted hyæna from the Cape of Good Hope, in Wombwell’s Menagerie. “I was able,” he writes,[181] “to observe the animal’s mode of proceeding in the destruction of bones: the shin-bone of an ox being presented to this hyæna, he began to bite off with his molar teeth large fragments from its upper extremity, and swallowed them whole as fast as they were broken off. On his reaching the medullary cavity, the bone split into angular fragments, many of which he caught up greedily and swallowed entire: he went on cracking it till he had extracted all the marrow, licking out the lowest portion of it with his tongue: this done, he left untouched the lower condyle, which contains no marrow, and is very hard. The state and form of this residuary fragment are precisely like those of similar bones at Kirkdale; the marks of teeth on it are very few, as the bone usually gave off a splinter before the large conical teeth had forced a hole through it; these few, however, entirely resemble the impressions we find on the bones at Kirkdale; the small splinters also in form and size, and manner of fracture, are not distinguishable from the fossil ones. I preserve all the fragments and the gnawed portions of this bone, for the sake of comparison by the side of those I have from the antediluvian den in Yorkshire: there is absolutely no difference between them, except in point of age. The animal left untouched the solid bones of the tarsus and carpus, and