Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/401

Rh of the choicest specimens to the British Museum, and submitted the remainder to Mr. Ayshford Sanford, F.G.S., from whom I learn that the principal portion of them are relics of the Cave Hyæna, from the unborn whelp to very aged animals. With them, however, were remains of Bear, Reindeer, Ox, Hare, Arvicola ratticeps, A. agrestis, Wolf, Fox, and part of a single maxillary with teeth not distinguishable from those of Canis isatis. To this list I may add Rhinoceros, of which Mr. Wolston showed me at least one bone.

From the foregoing undesirably, but unavoidably, brief descriptions, it will be seen that the Devonshire caverns, to which attention has been now directed, belong to two classes—those of Oreston, the Ash-Hole, and Bench being Fissure Caves; whilst those of Yealm Bridge, Windmill Hill at Brixham, Kent's Hole, and Ansty's Cove are Tunnel Caves.

Windmill Hill and Kent's Hole Caverns have alone been satisfactorily explored; and besides them none have yielded evidence of the contemporaneity of man with the extinct cave mammals.

Oreston is distinguished as the only known British cavern which has yielded remains of Rhinoceros leptorhinus (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxvi. p. 456).

Yealm Bridge Cavern, if we may accept Mr. Bellamy's identification in 1835, was the first in this country in which relics of Glutton were found (South Devon Monthly Museum, vi. pp.218—223; see also Nat. Hist. S. Devon., 1839, p. 19). The same species was found in the caves of Somerset and Glamorgan in 1865 (Pleist. Mam., Pal. Soc, pp. xxi., xxii ), in Kent's Hole in 1869 (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1869, p. 207), and near Plas Heaton, in North Wales, in 1870 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxvii. p. 407).

Kent's Hole is the only known British cave which has afforded remains of Beaver (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1869, p. 208), and up to the present year the only one in which the remains of Machairodus latidens had been met with. Indeed Mr. MacEnery's statement, that he found in 1826 five canines and one incisor of this species in the famous Torquay cavern was held by many palaeontologists to be so very remarkable as, at least, to approach the incredible, until the Committee now engaged in the exploration exhumed, in 1872, an incisor of the same species, and thereby confirmed the announcement made by their distinguished predecessor nearly half a century before (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1872, p. 46).