Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/388

362 present, with the exception of the Meetings of 1860 and 1870 only, the President of this Section has delivered an Address.

None of the local geological papers read in 1841 appear to have attracted so much attention as those on Lithodomous Perforations, Raised Beaches, Submerged Forests, and Caverns (see 'Athenæum' for 7th to 28th of August, 1841); and, as an effort to connect the present with the past, I have decided upon taking up one of these threads, and devoting the remarks I have now to offer to the History of Cavern-Exploration in Devonshire. I am not unmindful that there were giants in those days; and no one can deplore more than I do our loss of Buckland and De la Beche, amongst many others; nor can I forget the enormous strides opinion has made since 1841, when, in this Section, Dr. Buckland "contended that human remains had never been found under such circumstances as to prove their contemporaneous existence with the Hyænas and Bears of the caverns;" and added that "in Kent's Hole the Celtic knives .... were found in holes dug by art, and which had disturbed the floor of the cave and the bones below it" ('Athenæum,' 14th Aug. 1841, p. 626). This scepticism, however, did the good service of inducing cavern explorers to conduct their researches with an accuracy which should place their results, whatever they might prove to be, amongst the undoubted additions to human knowledge.

The principal caverns in South Devon occur in the limestone districts of Plymouth, Yealmpton, Brixham, Torquay, Buckfastleigh, and Chudleigh; but as those in the last two localities have yielded nothing of importance to the anthropologist or the palaeontologist, they will not be further noticed on this occasion. In dealing with the others it seems most simple to follow mainly the order of chronology; that is to say, to commence with the cavern which first caught scientific attention, and, having finished all that the time at my disposal will allow me to say about it, but not before, to proceed to the next, in the order thus defined; and so on through the series.

Oreston Caverns.—When Mr. Whidbey engaged to superintend the construction of the Plymouth Breakwater, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, requested him to examine narrowly any caverns he might meet with in the limestone-rock to he quarried at Oreston, near the mouth of the River Plym, not more than two miles from the room in which we are assembled, and have the bones or any other fossil remains that were met with carefully preserved