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.
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 such parts of the cylindrical bones as we find untouched at Kirkdale, and devoured only the parts analogous to those which are there deficient. The keeper, pursuing this experiment to its final result, presented me the next morning with a large quantity of album græcum, disposed in balls, that agree entirely in size, shape, and substance with those that were found in the den at Kirkdale. The power of his jaws far exceeded any animal force of the kind I ever saw exerted, and reminded me of nothing so much as of a miner’s crushing mill, or the scissors with which they cut off bars of iron and copper in the metal foundries.”
Fig. 80.—Leg-bones gnawed by Hyænas—1, of Ox in Menagerie; 2, of Bison in Kirkdale. (Buckland.)
The exact correspondence of one of the fragments of the tibia of an ox, gnawed by the Cape hyæna, with the corresponding bone of the bison from Kirkdale, may be gathered from a comparison of the two figured in [Fig. 80], in which the teeth-marks a, b, and c, are very distinct. The same kind of identity runs through the whole series of bones gnawed by the living and fossil hyænas.
Dr. Buckland’s conclusion, that the Kirkdale cave was the den of the spotted hyænas (H. crouta) that preyed upon the animals of Yorkshire in ancient times, and that it was undisturbed down to the time of its exploration, cannot be disputed. The tread of the hyænas in their passage to and fro had polished some of the bones and jaws scattered on the floor, and the polished surfaces were uppermost, the rest of the fragments being rough. And Prof. Phillips informs me that the leg-bone of a ruminant was discovered wedged into a small fissure in the floor, with that portion which was within reach of the hyæna’s teeth gnawed away, while the rest was uninjured. The hyæna had lost his bone in the fissure, and was only able to nibble the end which projected. In these incidents we have a vivid picture of an hyæna’s den in Yorkshire during the pleistocene age, with the contents left in their natural order and not rearranged by the passage of water.
The Victoria cave near Settle, in Yorkshire, described in the [third] chapter, has also been occupied by hyænas.