These explorations establish the fact that, in the antediluvian age which we now term pleistocene, the lion, the cave-bear and grizzly bear, and cave-hyæna abounded in Germany, and that they sought as their prey not merely the wild animals now living in that region, but the reindeer, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and Irish elk. All the discoveries in the German caves from the date of the exploration of Gailenreuth have merely verified this conclusion without adding any new fact of importance.
The Caves of Great Britain.
These discoveries in the German caves led to the exploration of those in our country. Dr. Buckland visited Gailenreuth in 1816, and in 1821 applied the result of his knowledge gained in Germany to the investigation of the famous cavern of Kirkdale.[180]
The Hyæna-den at Kirkdale.
Fig. 77.—Plan of Kirkdale Cave. (Taylor.)
The cave of Kirkdale ([Figs. 77], [78]) was discovered in a quarry in the vale of Pickering, about twenty-five miles to the NN.E. of York, at a point where the dale of Holmbeck joins Kirkdale. The entrance, eighty feet above the valley bottom and twenty feet from the surface of the plateau above, was about three feet high and six feet wide, and led into a passage from five to ten feet wide, which ran nearly horizontally into the rock, and branched off into smaller ramifications. Its general form and size may be gathered from the examination of the accompanying woodcuts, which were published by Mr. Taylor in “Macmillan’s Magazine,” in September 1862. The roof was for the most part free from stalactite, and there was no continuous coating of stalagmite on the floor, but merely here and there a few calcareous bosses termed “cows’ paps” by the workmen.
Fig. 78.—Sections of Kirkdale Cave. (Taylor.)
A layer of fine red loam covered the bottom, in the lower portions of which were large numbers of gnawed and broken bones, and teeth, for the most part of the same species as those formed in the German caves. In some places they were lying in little confused heaps, and in others, where the loam was thin, were exposed to the calcareous drip and cemented into a mass, their upper portions projecting through the stalagmite “like the legs of pigeons through pie-crust,” and their irregular distribution resembling that of the fragments scattered on the floor of a dog-kennel.