Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 31.djvu/331

Rh little of the ordinary cave-earth, or of the yellowish subsoil ("fox-earth"). The floor consisted principally of blackish mould, containing a few limestone fragments and pieces of chert. It Contained some bones, of which a portion were broken as though by man. They were bones of goat and pig, with those of the fox and rabbit. Two pieces of prehistoric pottery were also turned out; the ornamentation was unusually rude, even for this period, being simply punctures made in the clay, before baking, with a sharpened stick, without any regard to regularity.

Gelly or Hartle Dale.—Some time ago, in taking a stroll in company with Mr. Boyd Dawkins and Mr. John Tym, we entered the dale known as Gelly or Hartle Dale. Whilst examining some little caves and rock-shelters we picked up a milk-molar of a young woolly rhinoceros. It had been thrown up to the surface by rabbits burrowing in the floor of the small cave at the mouth of which it was found.

In an adjoining cavern there lay on the rock a tooth of a boar, evidently washed out of some fissure within.

The first-mentioned cave we dug out thoroughly, finding bones of rhinoceros and aurochs (Bison priscus), with a carpal of mammoth. There was no stalagmite present; all lay in the yellow earth mixed with angular limestone fragments, usually found in the small caves and fissures thereabouts, and which is evidently of subaerial origin. No trace of the hyæna appeared and I think there is no doubt the bones had been carried to their resting-place by water. Could the rock have been quarried away, it is highly probable that more bones would have been discovered in hidden fissures behind; that such existed was plain from the fact that the smoke of the fire lighted to boil our kettle at the mouth of a cave some 5 or 6 yards away found an exit in our cave, although no visible passage or communication existed.

Windy-Knoll Fissure.—In October 1870 I was in the Windy-Knoll quarry, in the Mountain-limestone near Castleton, when I noticed a large bone (a tibia) projecting from some of the angular debris which clothed the rock and filled the fissures.

I carried it and two or three other bones away, and showed them to Prof. Boyd Dawkins shortly after, when he determined them as belonging to the urus (Bos primigenius) and of Pleistocene age.

I accordingly examined the place carefully, and came to the conclusion that it was worth while to explore it. This it was impossible to do then or for long after, inasmuch as the debris was exposed in a fissure some distance up the side of the quarry, and could not be got at to any great extent without removing the rock behind which it was supported. This would have interfered with the working of the quarry, and would, in addition, have caused a great fall of earth upon broken stone lying below, to its no small detriment. However,