uckland, The Rev. Wm. "Account of an assemblage of fossil
teeth and bones ... at Kirkdale."]

[Illustration: Jaws of Kirkdale (above) and Modern Hyaena (below). The
Kirkdale Hyaenas were evidently much more powerful than the modern ones.]

Although the existing species have jaws of huge strength and these
prehistoric hyaenas were probably stronger still, it is quite improbable
that they ever attacked such large animals as elephants; and the fact that
the teeth found in the cave were of very young specimens seems to suggest
that the hyaenas now and then found the carcase of a young elephant that
had died, and dragged it piecemeal to their cave. The same would possibly
apply to some of the other large animals, for hyaenas, unless in great
extremes of hunger never attack a living animal. They have a loud and
mournful howl, beginning low and ending high, and also a maniacal laugh
when excited.

[Illustration: Teeth of young Elephants found at Kirkdale.]

It might be suggested that the bones had accumulated in the den through
dead bodies of animals being floated in during the inundation by the
waters of the lake, but in that case the remains, owing to the narrowness
of the mouth of the cave, could only have belonged to small animals, and
the skeletons would have been more or less complete, and there are also
evidences on many of the bones of their having been broken by teeth
precisely similar to those of the hyaena.

We see therefore that in this remote age Britain enjoyed a climate which
encouraged the existence of animals now to be found only in tropical
regions, that herds of mammoths or straight-tusked elephants smashed their
way through primaeval forests and that the hippopotamus and the woolly or
small-nosed rhinoceros frequented the moist country at the margin of the
lake. Packs of wolves howled at night and terrorised their prey, and in
winter other animals from northern parts would come as far south as
Yorkshire. In fact it seems that the northern and southern groups of
animals in Pleistocene times appeared in this part of England at different
seasons of the year and the hyaenas of Kirkdale would, in the opinion of
Professor Boyd Dawkins, prey upon the reindeer at one time of the year and
the hippopotamus at another.

Following this period came a time of intense cold, but the conditions were
not so severe as during the Great Glacial times.

[Illustration: Canine tooth or tusk of a Kirkdale bear (Ursus spelacus