CAVE-HUNTING IN SCOTLAND 99 



outstanding interest in the history of Scottish cave-hunting. 

 The cave had evidently been a refuge much frequented at 

 intervals throughout a long period of time, and, explored 

 with the geologists' keen sense of the value of accurate 

 zoning, has not only yielded an interesting glimpse of the 

 Scottish fauna at a critical period in its development, but 

 has furnished an abridged history of the physical develop- 

 ment of the district in the later days of the Ice Age and 

 thereafter. Perhaps the most interesting feature is that the 

 deposits bridge the period of man's arrival in northern Scot- 

 land, and supply some much needed evidence as to the 

 nature of the fauna in these early days. 



One is not disappointed in the expectation that in the 

 cave should be represented animals long since vanished from 

 Scotland. Conditions then were very different from now, as 

 the deposits themselves reveal. The lower or oldest bone- 

 containing deposit is composed of fine splinters of limestone, 

 apparently split by frost from the roof of the cavern. The 

 weather in this west country was cold indeed, but it was 

 dry ; for the streams which had once issued from the cave 

 had disappeared, the level of the glaciers had fallen in the 

 neighbouring valleys, and the cave had become sufficiently 

 comfortable to be tenanted by a large assemblage of animals. 

 That was in the days before man's appearance in northern 

 Scotland, perhaps in that mild interglacial period which 

 heralded the last extension of the ice-fields in the highland 

 valleys. 



The animal life of this period had a distinctly arctic 

 appearance, as befitted the conditions of its existence. Mr 

 E. T. Newton, in a valuable account of the animal remains, 

 records the presence of creatures still abundant with us, 

 such as the Stoat and Weasel, the Mountain or Variable 

 Hare, the Water Vole, Field Vole, and Bank Vole ; but side 

 by side with these familiars were found also the bones of the 

 long-extinct Arctic Lemming {Dicrostonyx torquatus) and 

 the Rat Vole (MicrotUs ratticeps), neither of which has left 

 any record of its presence in Scotland during the tenancy 

 of man. Their companion of the cave, the Brown Bear, 



