at examined by Dr. BUCKLAND at Kirkdale is an
example. They occur in the calcareous strata, as the great caverns
generally do, and have in all instances been naturally closed up till
the period of their discovery. At Kirkdale the remains of twenty-four
species of animals were found--namely, pigeon, lark, raven, duck,
partridge, mouse, water-rat, rabbit, hare, hippopotamus, rhinoceros,
elephant, weasel, fox, wolf, deer, ox, horse, bear, tiger, hyena. From
many of the bones of the gentler of these animals being found in a
broken state, it is supposed that the cave was the haunt of hyenas and
other predaceous animals, by which the smaller ones had been consumed.

We come last to the _Modern_ or _Superficial Formation_, of which the
best specimen is the great Bedford level, that spreads over the lower
lands of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire, consisting of
accumulations of silt, drifted matter, and bog-earth, some of which
began before the earliest periods of British history. When these
accumulations are removed by artificial means, we find below sometimes
shells of recent species, and the remains of an old estuary, sometimes
sand-banks, gravel beds, stumps of trees, and masses of drifted wood. On
this recent surface are found skulls of a living species of European
bear, skeletons of the Arctic wolf, European beaver and wild boar, and
numerous horns and bones of the roebuck and red deer, and of the
gigantic stag or Irish elk. They testify to a zoology on the verge of
that now prevailing or melting into it. In corresponding deposits of
North America are found remains of the mammoth, mastadon, buffalo, and
other animals of extinct or living species.

Considering it best not to interrupt the description of the successive
formations, this is almost the only allusion that has been made to the
fossils which constitute so important a part of geological science. It
is now to be explained that from an early period, that is, from the
metamorphic deposit to the close of the rock series, each formation is
found to enclose remains of the organic beings, plants, and animals,
which flourished upon earth during the time they were forming; and these
organisms, or such parts of them as were of sufficient solidity, have
been in many instances preserved with the utmost fidelity, although for
the most part converted into the substance of the enclosing mineral. The
rocks may be thus said to form a kind of history of the organic
depart