Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/541

Rh the Geological Society. It lay at a depth of 4 feet from the roof, and at a distance of 12 feet from the present entrance. It is described as having lain with some other implements in contact with teeth of hyæna, between dark bands of manganese full of bony splinters, which may have been old floors of the cave; so that the occupation by the hyæna seems to have succeeded, or alternated with, that by man. It is of white flint, and closely resembles in form some of the smaller implements from the River-drift. It is of less size than the ovoid instruments from Kent's Cavern, and is not so neatly made as some of them. A smaller instrument from the Wookey Hyæna Den is of much the same form, but still less artistically worked. It is 2 inches long and 1 inches broad, and may be compared with that from Kent's Cavern shown in Fig. 389. Other specimens were more of the "sling-stone" form; in addition to which there were numerous flakes and splinters of flint and chert. One flake, which, though it has lost its point, is still 2 inches long, has been trimmed by secondary chipping on the flat face, slightly so along one side, but on the other, over half the surface of the flake, which is 1 inches wide near the base. When perfect this instrument was probably much like that from Kent's Cavern, Fig. 391. Both its edges show considerable signs of wear by use. Another form described by Prof. Boyd Dawkins is roughly pyramidal, with a smooth and flat base, and a cutting edge all round, much like an instrument found in the cave of Aurignac by M. Lartet. Of this form there were two examples, both made of chert from the Upper Greensand.

The fauna of the cave, so far as the larger animals are concerned, is the same as that of Kent's Cavern, with the addition of Rhinoceros hemitœhus, and of a lemming, and with the exception of Machairodus. The exact method of accumulation of the deposits in this cave it is very difficult to explain. Prof. Boyd Dawkins has suggested that during its occupation by hyænas, and perhaps for some time afterwards, it was subject to floods similar to those which now from time to time take place in the caverns in the neighbourhood. One thing appears certain, that previously to the filling up of the principal chamber it must, for a longer or shorter period, have been occupied by man; who here also again appears to have been associated with that same fauna, now either totally or locally extinct, with which traces of his handiwork have been discovered intermingled in so many other deposits of a similar character, both on the Continent and in Britain. With regard to the physical features of the country. Sir Charles Lyell observes, "When I examined the spot in 1860, after I had been