Page:The history of Little England beyond Wales and the non-Kymric colony settled in Pembrokeshire.pdf/33

Rh are, moveover, no hyæna coprolites, and no sign of man, either paleolithic or neolithic. To the present (1886) we have not discovered the outlet, though there can be little doubt that it is in the field on the top of the quarry.

About the year 1840 the quarrymen, while blasting a cliff on the northern side of the island, broke into an ossiferous cave. Only a portion of the bones were preserved and verified. Among these were mammoth (elephas primigenius), rhinoceros, lion (felis leo var. spelæa), hyæna (crocuta var. spelæa), bear (ursus spelæus and arctos), horse (equus caballus), ox (bos premigenius), deer of sorts, wolf (canis lupus), fox (canis vulpes).

It did not in those early days occur to Mr. Smith to search for implements; but as neolithic remains, such as the bones of swine, sheep or goat, fish, and other recent animals were found, it is likely enough that the later stone implements at all events may have been present. Mr. Smith considered that all these bones were water carned. This ts unlikely as regards the neolithic fauna, and as carnivores were present, improbable as to the pleistocene. The cave was about 100 feet above the sea level. The outlet was not discovered.

A second cave not far from this was laid open in 1858. The bones on the surface were recklessly destroyed, but fortunately a fall of debris prevented the floor being broken up, and it was afterwards examined by Professor Boyd Dawkins. He obtained numerous bones and teeth of young wolves representing a litter, and two metatarsals of bisons cemented together into a compact mass. The Rev. G. N. Smith and myself dug from the same source lion, mammoth, rhinoceros (tichorhinus), horse, hippopotamus, wild boar, Irish elk, red deer, reindeer, and bos primigenius. I saw no trace of coprolites, but still from the tooth-marks on some of the bones am disposed to think that it was a wild beasts’ den in pleistocene times. Professor Boyd Dawkins’s young wolves would surely have been dispersed had they been carried into the cave by a torrent. I found no neolithic remains; but as they would have been on the surface, they may have been shovelled overboard when the cave was discovered in 1858.

I have picked up the elbow-joint of a mammoth on the South Sands, Tenby. Of course this may haye been one of the bones thrown out of the Caldy cave; but as the edges were not rubbed by the action of the sea, and as I found at the same time considerable quantities of peat, like that existing in the "sunken forest" which lies under the medium tide mark in several parts of the county, I believe that both the peat and bone were torn up from a similar formation lying between Caldy and the mainland by a storm. A portion of the humerus of a mammoth was picked up on this forest bed near Amroth, and is now in the Tenby Museum. This bone has become petrified through infiltration of water highly charged with carbonate of lime, which is an unusual phenomenon in our caves. Some very fine teeth of the great cave bear (ursus spelæus) were found while digging out the foundation of a house on the Esplanade, Tenby, in a small fissure in the limestone.

Without doubt the most interesting ossiferous cave in West Wales is the Coygan, near Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire, It is excavated from an outlying hill of mountain limestone,