Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 33.djvu/683

Rh Possibly this clay may have been connected with the same flow of water which afterwards deposited the gravel and conglomerate in the same chambers. Bones were very abundant in this red sand- bed, together with teeth of most of the Mammalia occurring in the upper beds; in the argillaceous portion of it, under the breccia, on the left-hand side of Chamber A, where the cave-earth was very thin, a nearly perfect skull of the Hyæna was found, and also one of the Fox, and the posterior part of a Wolf's skull, together with fragments of the lower jaw of the Horse, and other remains. In the red sand of Chamber A, up to the close of 1875, we had obtained no evidence of human occupation during the period of its deposition; but further in, especially in Chambers G and F, a considerable number of worked quartzite pebbles were found in this bed.

7. Original Floor.—The original floor of the Robin-Hood Cave was immediately below the red sand, and consisted of a greater or less thickness of decomposed limestone rock forming a whitish sand containing angular fragments of the limestone. In this no remains of any sort were found.

8. Chamber C.—It will be observed that comparatively few bones were discovered in Chamber C, large as is this portion of the cave. The rock floor in it was generally nearer to the roof than in the other chambers, and the deposits of cave-earth and sand were, on the whole, less thick; at the extreme left a considerable stalagmitic deposit is to be seen coating the rock. The comparative absence of bones in this chamber may perhaps be attributed to the presence of a stream of water running for some time through this branch of the cavern.

9. Chambers D and E.—The little side chamber, D, was formed by a protruding mass of rock; it consisted of a hollow in the rocky floor, and was consequently filled up with a greater thickness of beds than C. This was also the case with Chamber E; the narrow passage leading into it was bare of any deposits, the limestone floor rising to the surface from beneath the cave-earth of the adjoining chamber. In both chambers, D and E, we found at least 8 feet of cave-earth and red sand (fig. 7) containing bones and teeth: the surface-soil, which had been previously examined, had yielded some traces of occupation by man in Roman and post-Roman times.

10. Chamber G.—The small opening G, on the right-hand side of the cave, was filled up to within a few inches of the roof. The breccia at its mouth was 16 inches thick and contained bones; further in it decreased to about 2 inches; it was followed by the complete sequence of beds, viz. cave-earth, mottled bed, and red sand; the mottled bed died out at about 10 feet from the entrance of the aperture (fig. 6). A considerable number of bones and teeth were found in this chamber, amongst them a lower jaw of C. megaceros, a pelvis of the Woolly Rhinoceros, many teeth of the same animal and of the Hyæna and others, some large bones of the Mammoth, and also many quartzite implements, as well as the second of the clay-ironstone ones already mentioned.

11. Terminal Fissure.—At the extremity of Chamber F (fig. 5),