198 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
During the whole time that I was engaged in digging a number of 
women and children were hard at work sifting the earth for shells. 
These consist principally of Paludomus gardneri, and more rarely 
of Paludomus dilatata, Acavus phoenix, Bulimus albizonatus, 
Aulopoma hoffmeisteri, and Philopotamis globulosa, which latter, 
my workers assured me, were not to be found within fifteen miles. 
I engaged six men, and started work on August 11 by digging a 
trench leading from Mr. Parsons’s excavation northwards, and 
incidentally clearing out the hole which he had dug and which 
bad become partially choked. Near the surface we found traces 
of recent civilization: fragments of pottery, at first stout and well 
made, later thin and fragile, quantities of charred wood and bones 
mingled with archaic chips of quartz and chert, buttons, and a short 
length of cheap brass chain. Under similar circumstances in Europe 
one might have reckoned confidently on unearthing a few coins; 
but it is certain that none reached my hands. Between 2 and 3 
feet below the surface modern traces disappeared, and nothing 
came to light but fragments of quartz, chert, bone, and shells. 
At four o’clock we knocked off for the day, at a depth of 4 feet 
6 inches. 
As the earth was dug out, it was loaded into baskets, carried 
outside, and passed through a l-inch sieve. I selected whatever 
struck my eye ; but it is likely that better work would have been 
done with a smaller sieve. One or two well-shaped bone implements 
were recovered by the women sifting the earth for snail shells. 
Next day, August 12, we resumed digging at the same place, but 
in less than an hour we found large boulders which barred our way, 
and were forced to abandon the hole at a depth of 5 feet. 
I thereupon selected a spot at the southern end of the recess in the 
rock wall already mentioned, and started a trench 8 feet long by 
5 feet in breadth. The digging, I may say, is extremely easy work, 
the earth being light and dry, grayish-brown in colour, and largely 
composed of sand, ashes, and bats’ droppings. We found pottery 
down to 3 feet, with rare quartz chips ; below 3 feet the latter became 
more numerous. Chert was comparatively scarce, which is all the 
more surprising, as a boulder occurs in a*stream within half a mile 
of the cave. I examined this later, and found it much splintered, 
having no doubt been drawn upon for gun-flints and strike-a-lights. 
In this second excavation some bones were recovered showing knife- 
cuts and, at a considerable depth, a small waterworn fragment of 
plumbago. At a depth of 7 feet 6 inches we were again stopped 
by boulders ; but snail shells and quartz chips were withdrawn by 
hand from under these. 
A thickness of 7 feet of cave-earth would in Europe lead us to 
assign a very remote antiquity to the bottom layer. Unless a cave 
is exposed to floods, such earth can only be composed of wind- 
borne dust and of particles adhering to the feet of beasts or men 
