Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 31.djvu/838

682 bedding in this sand; only here and there its character was modi- fied by the decomposition of some of the limestone blocks. From the surface downwards bones were found in great abundance in all parts of this bed; but they were specially massed together at the bottom of it. The bones were much broken, and many of them very evidently gnawed by Hyænas, of which animals numerous teeth and fragments of the lower jaws were found. Many of the longer bones lay with their long axes parallel to the sides of the fissure, and with their heavier ends foremost. Other bones were wedged together close to the sides in masses consisting of vertebræ, parts of leg-bones, and of antlers. The bones are in various stages of preservation, some being very decomposed and fragile, others very fresh-looking, although lying side by side with them; in all probability there has been a certain amount of rearrangement of the bones at an early period by the flow of water through the fissure, which appears to have been at one time a hyæna-den. One large fragment of mammoth's bone partly ex- tended from the sand bed into the surface-soil; and at some distance in, a fine molar of the same animal was found, about 1 foot below the top of the bed. Several very perfect molars of Rhinoceros tichorhinus and portions of antlers of deer were obtained at this point, together with some of the hyæna-jaws already mentioned; two large fragments of the leg-bones of the rhinoceros and a number of smaller leg-bones lay not very far apart near the same spot, where a huge block of limestone had apparently caused an obstruction. Where the fissure was contracted by projecting portions of rock which were partly undermined, the sand was of a very calcareous nature, being full of angular pieces of the limestone, many of which were of a soft and crumbly nature. There were not so many bones here, the few found being very fragmentary and friable; and at present very few bones have been met with at the back of the barrier. This is a thing difficult to understand upon the hypothesis of the bones having been carried into the fissure from the back, which was the opinion I had first formed, basing it upon the parallelism of the larger bones to the sides of the fissure. Professor Busk has very kindly examined and named the numerous bones found in this fissure (A), the list of which is appended to this paper.

Besides the remains of larger animals, great quantities of teeth and other bones of small rodents (Arvicola &c.)were disseminated throughout the sand, which also contained some cycloid fish-scales, and a few vertebræ of some fish.

The sand bed No. 3, on which the bone-bearing bed rests, is sharply defined from it, being much lighter in colour; it is highly calcareous and is consolidated into semiconcretionary-looking masses below the rocky barrier already alluded to. At this point I cut into it to a depth of 1 foot without finding any trace of the bones which were so abundant immediately above it. At present I have not been able to ascertain its thickness, and I have nowhere reached the bottom of the fissure.

Some hundred yards or so lower down the ravine a large cavern, "Robin Hood's Cave" (cavern B), is met with, containing four or five