ed to
the eye, that, as the receptacle was infinitely too small to
contain such a crowd of animals in their living state, they must
necessarily have occupied it in succession: one portion of them
after another paying the debt of nature, and (leaving their bones
only, as a memorial of their existence on the spot) thus making
room in the cavern for a succeeding set of inhabitants, of
similarly ferocious habits to themselves. The difficulty, indeed,
of the ingress of such beasts into the cave did not long continue
to be invincible; as Mr Beard discovered and cleared out a lateral
aperture in it, sufficiently inclining from the perpendicular, and
sufficiently large in its dimensions, to admit of the easy descent
into this subterraneous apartment of one of its unwieldy tenants,
though loaded with its prey.

"From the circumstances premised, you will probably anticipate my
thoughts on these remarkable phenomena; if not, they are as
follow:--I consider the cavern to have been formed at the period of
the original deposition and consolidation of the matter
constituting the mountain limestone in which it is found; possibly
by the agency of some elastic gas, imprisoned in the mass, which
prevented the approximation of its particles to each other; or by
some unaccountable interruption to the operation of the usual laws
of its crystallization;--that, for a long succession of ages
anterior to the Deluge, and previously to man's inhabiting the
colder regions of the earth, Banwell Cave had been inhabited by
successive generations of beasts of prey; which, as hunger
dictated, issued from their den, pursued and slaughtered the
gregarious animals, or wilder quadrupeds, in its neighbourhood; and
dragged them, either bodily or piecemeal, to this retreat, in order
to feast upon them at leisure, and undisturbed;--that the bottom of
the cavern thus became a kind of charnel-house, of various and
unnumbered beasts;--that this scene of excursive carnage continued
till 'the flood came,' blending 'the oppressor with the oppressed,'
and mixing the hideous furniture of the den with a quantity of
extraneous matter, brought from the adjoining shore, and subjacent
lands, by the waters of the Deluge, which rolled, surging (as
Kirwan imagines), from the north-western quarter;--t