Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/396

370 rather the breccia, the lowest of them, also yielded evidences of human existence; but they were exclusively tools made from nodules, not flakes, of flint and chert.

Ansty's-Cove Cavern.—About three furlongs from Kent's Hole towards N.N.E., near the top of the lofty cliff forming the northern boundary of the beautiful Ansty's Cove, Torquay, there is a cavern where, simultaneously with those in Kent's Cavern, Mr. MacEnery conducted some researches, of which he has left a brief account (see Trans. Devon. Assoc, vi. pp. 61–69). I have visited it several times, but it seems to be frequently kept under lock and key, as a tool and powder-house, by the workmen in a neighbouring quarry. It is a simple gallery, and, according to Mr. MacEnery, 63 feet long, from 3 to 9 feet high, and from 3 to 6 feet broad. Beneath some angular stones he found a stalagmitic floor 14 inches thick, and in the deposit below remains of Deer, Horse, Bear, Fox, Hyæna (?), coprolites, a few marine and land shells, one white flint tool with fragments of others, a Roman coin, and potsherds. In a letter to Sir W. C. Trevelyan, dated 16th December, 1825, Dr. Buckland states that Mr. MacEnery had found in this cave "bones of all sorts of beasts, and also flint knives and Roman coins; in short, an open-mouthed cave, which has been inhabited by animals of all kinds, quadruped and biped, in all successive generations, and who have all deposited their exuviæ one upon another" {ibid. p. 69).

Yealm-Bridge Cavern.—About the year 1832 the workmen broke into a bone-cavern in Yealm-Bridge Quarry, about one mile from the village of Yealmpton, and eight miles E.S.E. from Plymouth; and through their operations it was so nearly destroyed that but a small arm of it remained in 1835, when it was visited by Mr. J.C. Bellamy, who at once wrote an account of it, from which it appears that, so far as he could learn, the cavern was about 30 feet below the original limestone surface, and was filled to from 1 foot to 6 feet of the roof (see Nat. Hist. S. Devon. 1839, pp. 86—105). In the same year, but subsequently, it was examined by Captain (afterwards Colonel) Mudge, who states that there were originally three openings into the cave, each about 12 feet above the River Yealm; that the deposits were, in descending order: —