Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/277

Rh firmary, barracks, and the union workhouse. Cavan has still some linen trade, and a considerable retail business is transacted in the town. It is the seat of a presbytery of tho Presbyterian church, but the great majority of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics. A monastery of Dominican friars, founded by O Reilly, chieftain of the Brenny, formerly existed here, and became the burial-place of the celebrated Irish general, Owen O Neal, who died as is supposed by poison, in 1649, at Cloughoughter. This monastery, and all the other antiquities of the town, have been swept away during the violent and continuous feuds to which the country has been subjected. Even so late as the year 1G90 the chief portion of the town was burned by the Enniskilleners under General Wolseley.  CAVANILLES, (1745-1804), a Spanish ecclesiastic who devoted himself to botany, was born at Valencia in 1745. He was educated by the Jesuits at the university of that town, and became tutor of the sons of the Duke of Infantado, whom he accompanied to Paris. There he resided twelve years, enjoying the friendship of the famous Jussieu, whose views he adopted. He after wards became director of the royal garden at Madrid. In 1789 and the following years, he published Dissertations upon Monadelphous Plants, and in 1790 he commenced to issue his work on the plants of Spain, and those discovered by Spanish navigators in Mexico, Peru, Chili, New Holland, and the Philippine Islands.  CAVE (Latin cavea), a hollow extending beneath the surface of the earth. Caves have excited the awe and wonder of mankind in all ages, and have been the centres round which have clustered many legends and supersti tions. They were the abode of the sibyls and the nymphs in lloman mythology, and in Greece they were the temples of Pan, Bacchus, Pluto, and the Moon, as well as the places where the oracles were delivered at Delphi, Corinth, and Mount Cithreron. In Persia they were connected with the obscure worship of Mithras. Their names frequently are survivals of the superstitious ideas of antiquity, as for example, the Fairy, Dragon s, or Devil s Caves of France and Germany. Long after the Fairies and Little Men had forsaken the forests and glens of Germany, they dwelt in their palaces deep in the Hartz Mountains, in the Dwarf holes, &c., whence they came from time to time into the upper air. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus slept their long sleep in a cave. The hills of Granada are still believed by the Moorish children to contain the great Boabdil, and his sleeping host, who wall awake, when an adventurous mortal invades their repose, to restore the glory of the Moors in Spain. Caves have been used in all ages by mankind for habita tion, refuge, and burial. In the Old Testament we read that when Lot went up out of Zoar he dwelt in a cave with his two daughters. The five kings of the Canaanites took refuge from Joshua, and David from Saul, in the caves of Palestine, just as the Aquitani fled from Caesar to those of Auvergne, and the Arabs of Algeria to those of Dahra, where they were suffocated by Marshal Pelissier in 1845. In Central Africa Dr Livingstone tells us that there are vast caves in which whole tribes find security with their cattle and household stuff. The cave of Machpelah may be quoted as an example of their use as sepulchres, and the rock-hewn tombs of Palestine and of Egypt, and the Catacombs of Rome probably owe their existence to the ancient practice of burial in natural hollows in the rock. We might therefore expect to find in them most important evidence as to the ancient history of mankind, which would reach long beyond written record ; and since they have always been used by wild beasts as lairs we might reasonably believe also that their exploration would throw light upon the animals which have in many cases disappeared from the countries which they formerly inhabited. The labours of Buckland, Pen- gelly, Falconer, Lartet, and Christy, and Dawkins, carried on during the last fifty years in the caves, have added an entirely new chapter to the history of man in Europe, as well as established the changes that have taken place in the European fauna. The physical history of caves will be taken first, and we shall then pass on to the discoveries relating to man and the lower animals which have been made in them of late years.

Physical History.—The most obvious agent in hollowing out caves is the sea. The set of the currents, the force of the breakers, the grinding of the shingle inevitably discover the weak places in the cliff, and leave caves as one of tho results of their work, modified in each case by the local conditions of the rock. Those formed in this manner are easily recognized from their floors being rarely much out of the horizontal; their entrances are all in the same plane, or in a succession of horizontal and parallel planes, if the land has been elevated at successive times. From their inaccessible position they have been rarely occupied by man. Among them Fingal s Cave, on the island of Staffa, off the south-west coast of Scotland, hollowed out of columnar basalt, is perhaps the most remarkable in Europe. In volcanic regions also there are caves formed by the passage of lava to the surface of the ground, or by the expansion of steam and gases in the lava while it was in a molten state. They have been observed in the regions round Vesuvius and Etna, in Iceland and Teneriffe. We may take as an example the Grotto del Cane (cave of the dog), near Pozzuoli, a few miles to the south-west of Naples, remarkable for the flow of carbonic acid from crevices in the floor, which fills the lower part of the cave and suffo cates any small animal, such as a dog, immersed long enough in it. The most important class of caves, however, and that which immediately demands our notice, is that composed of those which have been cut out of calcareous rocks by the action of carbonic acid in the rain-water, combined with the mechanical friction of the sand and stones set in motion by the streams which have, at one time or another, flowed through them. They occur at various levels, and are to be met with wherever the strata are sufficiently compact to support a roof. Those of Brixham and Torquay, and of the Eifel are in the Devonian limestone ; those of Wales, Somerset, the central and northern counties of Belgium, Saxony, and Westphalia, of Maine and Anjou, of Virginia and Kentucky, are in that of the Carboniferous age. The cave of Kirkdale in Yorkshire, and most of those in Franconia and Bavaria, penetrate Jurassic limestones. The compact Neocomian and cretaceous limestones of Central Franco contain most of the caverns of Perigord, rendered famous by the discovery of the remains of the Eskimos along with the animals which they hunted ; as well as those of Northern Italy, Sicily, Greece, Dalmatia, Carniola, and Palestine. The cave of Lunelviel near Montpellier is the most important of those which have been hollowed in limestones of the Tertiary age. They are also met with in rocks composed of gypsum ; in Thuringia, for example, they occur in the saliferous and gypseous strata of the Zechstein, and in the gypseous Tertiary rocks of the neighbourhood of Paris, as for example at Montmorency. Caves formed by the a-ction of carbonic acid, and the action of water are distinguished from others by tho following characters. They open on the abrupt sides of valleys and ravines at various levels, and are arranged round the main axes of erosion, just as the branches are arranged round the trunk of a tree. In a great many cases the relation of the valley to the ravine, and of the ravine to 