Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 28.djvu/510

416 air as it would be for a sheet of ice to be formed without resting on water. Prom some cause or other this ancient stalagmite has been in part broken up, and the materials by which it was formerly supported have disappeared. That, however, even prior to its formation animals dwelt in the cave is proved by the bones which are imbedded in the large fallen masses. Moreover there is reason to believe that certain fragments of bone and splinters of teeth, remarkable for their mineralization, that have been found in the earth now occupying the cavern, were derived from this more ancient deposit; for they differ essentially from the remains with which they are now associated, being heavier and of a more crystalline structure. Some splinters have assumed the fracture of greensand chert. So hard indeed was one of the canines of Bear, that it has been splintered by the hand of man into the form of a flint-flake, and has evidently been used for a cutting-purpose. Its fracture proves that it was mineralized before it was splintered; and as it was found in the present cave-earth, it must have been fashioned while the cave was being inhabited by palæolithic man prior to the accumulation of the earth. For these reasons the evidence in favour of these denser remains having belonged to the deposit which once supported the ancient floor seems to me to be incontrovertible.

This view opens up an entirely new field for investigation as to the discovery of the Machærodus; for it is very likely that this mammal may really belong to the older cave-earth, and not to the more modern, in which the remains of the Mammoth, Woolly Rhinoceros, and the like occur. But whether this be true or not, it adds a tenfold interest to the exploration of the cave, because there may be still left, in some nook or corner, masses of the older breccia, containing forms of life that had passed away before the arctic mammalia occupied the south of England.

The presence in the cave at Oreston, in the same district, of the Pliocene Rhinoceros megarhinus (an animal which has never yet been met with in any of the Late Pleistocene caves or river-deposits) strengthens the conclusion that some of the caves in the south of England may contain a fauna that was living before the Late Pleistocene age.

Both these caves were probably occupied by the wild beasts for a very considerable length of time; and the remains left behind after each occupation would be extremely likely to be mixed up together, by the passage of water through the chambers, during the oscillations of level which undoubtedly took place during the Pleistocene age. Proof of such oscillations in the south of England is afforded by the submerged forest-bed of Bracklesham, in Sussex, which is covered over by a deposit of Boulder-clay and ancient marine shingle. This explanation of their presence seems to me to be more probable than the assumption that they were living during the later Pleistocene period in that area; for in that case their remains would be more commonly met with in the many caves of the south of England, as well as in those of the Late Pleistocene age in