,--that they dragged into
their dens with the carcasses of long extinct animals those of the still
familiar denizens of our hill-sides, and feasted, now on the lagomys,
and now on the common hare,--that they now fastened on the beaver or the
reindeer, and now upon the roebuck or the goat. In one of these caves,
such of the bones as projected from the stiff soil have been actually
worn smooth in a narrow passage where the hyaenas used to come in contact
with them in passing out and in; and for several feet in depth the floor
beneath is composed almost exclusively of gnawed fragments, that still
exhibit the deeply indented marks of formidable teeth. In the famous
Kirkdale cave alone, parts of the skeletons of from two to three hundred
hyaenas have been detected, mixed with portions of the osseous framework
of the cave-tiger, the cave-bear, the ox, the deer, the mammoth, and the
rhinoceros. That cave must have been a den of wild creatures for many
ages ere the times of the boulder clay, during which period it was shut
up from all access to the light and air by a drift deposit, and lay
covered over until again laid open by some workmen little more than
thirty years ago. Not only were many of the wild animals of the country
which still exist contemporary for a time with its extinct bears,
tigers, and elephants, but it seems at least highly probable that
several of our domesticated breeds derived their origin from progenitors
whose remains we find entombed in the bone-caves and other deposits of
the same age; though of course the changes effected by domestication in
almost all the tame animals renders the question of their identity with
the indigenous breeds somewhat obscure. Cuvier was, however, unable to
detect any difference between the skeleton of a fossil horse,
contemporary with the elephant, and that of our domestic breed: a fossil
goat of the same age cannot be distinguished from the domesticated
animal; and one of our two fossil oxen (_Bos longifrons_) does not
differ more from some of the existing breeds than these have, in the
course of time, been made, chiefly by artificial means, to differ among
themselves. But of one of our domestic tribes no trace has yet been
found in the rocks: like the cod family among fishes, or the Rosaceae
among plants, it seems to have preceded man by but a very brief period.
And certainly, if created specially for his use, though the pride of the
herald might prevent him from selecting it