ON RAINS CAVE, LONGCLIFFK, DERBYSHIRE. 165 



evidence at all that interments had been made so near the cave 

 side : the ancient men would, for convenience sake, choose more 

 central spots for this purpose. On the other hand, there were 

 ample proofs that these objects related to interments originally 

 made nearer the middle of the cave, and disturbed and scattered 

 within the earlier sepulchral period. The fragments of Skull E 

 proved this in a remarkable way. Some of them were 

 found under the stalagmites of the right region ; some in the 

 central, at various levels ; while a portion of the frontal was so 

 considerably above the seams of stalagmite, as to have been turned 

 up in the superficial diggings of 1888. The testimony is clear 

 enough. The first resting place of the body to which this skull 

 pertained was somewhere in the central region. Then came the 

 burial of another body ; in making the shallow depression for 

 which, the bones of the former were disturbed, and many of them 

 thrown out with the soil and left scattered around the new grave. 

 May we not infer that the interval between tliese two burials was 

 so long that the mourners of the second had no interest in the 

 deceased person of the first ? That the interval was considerable, 

 has fair support from the evident state of the skull at the time of 

 the second burial. It had been buried sufficiently long to readily 

 fall to pieces, and in so doing, exhibited the fractured edges usual 

 to bones which have lost their gelatinous matters. Thus far we 

 are still within the earlier sepulchral era, and for anything we 

 know, these bones may have been disturbed again and again before 

 its close. After a much longer interval, during which the stalag- 

 mites were deposited and the flint-knapper made the cave his 

 temporary home, graves were again dug ; and in digging one of 

 these, one fragment, at least, of our skull was brought up from 

 below the stalagmites to the then surface, and left vertically above 

 its fellow fragments under the undisturbed stalagmites. 



The testimony of the fragments of vase, shown in Fig. i., was 

 equally to the point. A fragment or two were found below the 

 stalagmite seams, others above, and another near the surface 

 about the middle of the cave. The latter was covered with a 

 crust of stalagmite ; and as no such deposit has ever been formed 



