Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/398

372 Sections, p. 61). So far as was then known, the cave was thirty yards long and six yards broad. Below a recent accumulation, four feet deep, of loam and earth, with land and marine shells, bones of the domestic fowl and of man, pottery, and various implements, lay a true cave-earth, abounding in the remains of Elephant. Prof Owen, who identified, from this lower bed, relics of Badger, Polecat, Stoat, Water Vole, Rabbit, and Reindeer, remarks, that for the first good evidence of the Reindeer in this island he had been indebted to Mr. Bartlett, who stated that the remains were found in this cavern (see Brit. Foss. Mam. 1846, pp. 109–110, 113–114, 116, 204, 212, 479–480). I have made numerous visits to the spot, which, when Mr. Lyte began his diggings, must have been a shaftlike fissure, accessible from the top only. A lateral opening, however, has been quarried into it; there is a narrow tunnel extending westward, in which the deposit is covered with a thick sheet of stalagmite, and where one is tempted to believe that a few weeks' labour might be well invested.

Brixham Cavern.—Early in 1858 an unsuspected cavern was broken into by quarrymen at the north-western angle of Windmill Hill at Brixham, at a point 75 feet above the surface of the street, almost vertically below, and 100 feet above mean tide. On being found to contain bones, a lease in it was secured for the Geological Society of London, who appointed a committee of their members to undertake its exploration; funds were voted by the Royal Society, and supplemented by private subscriptions; the conduct of the investigation was intrusted to Mr. Prestwich and myself; and the work, under my superintendence, as the only resident member of the committee, was begun in July, 1858, and completed at midsummer, 1869. The cavern, comprised within a space of 135 feet from north to south, and 100 from east to west, consisted of a series of tunnel galleries from 6 to 8 feet in greatest depth, and 10 to 14 feet in height, with two small chambers and five external entrances. The deposits, in descending order, were:—

1st, or uppermost. A floor of stalagmite, from a few inches to a foot thick, and continuous over very considerable areas, but not throughout the entire cavern.

2nd. A mass of small angular fragments of limestone, cemented into a firm concrete with carbonate of lime, commenced at the principal entrance, which it completely filled, and whence it extended 34 feet only. It was termed the "first bed."