WHOLF, VOr.. SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN IIRDLICKA I4I 



as affording a possible explanation. The well defined, nearly vertical face of 

 solid ore which forms the northwest end of the cave may be the result of subsi- 

 dence caused by the ore or rock below having been dissolved away by under- 

 ground currents of water, or by thermal springs. This large cavity having been 

 formed, it may have become filled up by clayey matter, bones, etc., washed in 

 from above, and a subsequent subsidence having taken place, a portion of the 

 filling may have remained behind, thereby forming the roof of the present cave. 

 No entrance has been found, although the southern face of the hill has been 

 scraped clean in benches in taking away ore. 



The second filling up of the cave may have been as follows : In the yearly 

 rise and fall of water due to the recurring rainy and dry seasons, the fine par- 

 ticles remaining from tlie disintegration of the limestone would sink down until 

 the bottom was raised to such a level that it would for a great part of the year 

 serve as a habitation for human beings. During each rainy season the rising 

 water would force the inhabitants to retire or occupy the upper part of the cave, 

 and season by season fresh layers of bones, rubbish, stones, etc., would raise the 

 floor still higher. 



The entrance may not yet have been discovered, it may be small. It may 

 have been blocked up by falls of rock or covered over by gradual deposition of 

 ore from solutions, as was the case with the bone deposit on the eastern side. 

 It is probable that the entrance was closed up in some way, and that gradually 

 the earth, clay and bones forming the floor or filling settled down and receded 

 from the sides and roof during the recurrent dry seasons. During this period 

 the beautiful crystals of different minerals already referred to, would be de- 

 posited from the solutions permeating the mass of ore in the hill Many 



of the animal remains have been examined in the Rhodesia Museum by Messrs. 

 F. P. Mennell, the Curator, and E. C. Chubb, the Assistant Curator, with the 

 result that the following identifications have been made. 



Mr. While's communication is followed by Mr. E. C. Chubb's " List 

 of Vertebrate Remains " from the cave (already given), and to this 

 is added a Discussion which brings out or accentuates a number of 

 further points of interest : 



Mr. Marshall Hole : What interested me and probably many others in the 

 room most was the evidence afforded on the immense antiquity of man in South 

 Central Africa. I paid a visit to the cave in June of the present year and was 

 struck by the fact that the chipped implements of which I found and brought 

 away several specimens, were confined to a small portion of the cave and that 

 the deepest. I also found a bone which had been perforated probably for use 

 as an ornament and this is now in the Bulawayo Museum. 



Father Goetz asked: (i) In what part of the cave were the stone implements 

 found? (2) In what part of the cave were the bones of the extinct animals 

 found? (3) How was the cave formed? Was it not a subterranean cave whose 

 top had fallen in, so that the filling up had come from above? 



Mr. Colville : I believe the extinct species was found in the upper level in 

 which the greatest number of large bones are found. The stone implements lay 

 thickest in the lower level anywhere where bones were found but there were also 

 some near the large bones in the upper part. I think it likely that at different 

 periods the cave was occupied by humans and then abandoned for some reason 



