lao ROMANO-BRITISH OBJECTS FROM DEEPDALE. 



leaf-shaped arrow-head about 27^ inches long; and an iron nail, 

 27I inches long. Among the bronze objects were the pin of a 

 penannular brooch ; a finger-ring formed of a coil of wire ; a 

 fragment of sheet-bronze chased with a fine basket-work pattern ; 

 and an illegible second brass coin. Besides these there were a 

 small cylindrical green glass bead, and a bone needle which 

 originally must have been about six inches long. 



I feel sure that if all the objtcts found in the dark surface soil 

 were carefully examined, they would indicate that the cave was 

 inhabited both before and after that period. 



The various excavations made by Messrs, Salt and Millett, 

 although obviously made with most commendable care, cannot be 

 regarded as fulfilling the requirements of recent science. This 

 is no fault of theirs. It would have been impossible for them 

 single-handed to have carried out the well-known system of the 

 one-foot parallelopipeds of the Kents' Cavern excavation at 

 Torquay, which the writer adopted in that of Rains Cave, and 

 described in the second report thereon. It would have been 

 foolish to have attempted it without the regular employment of a 

 proper staff of workmen ; and this would have necessitated an 

 expenditure of — well, say, ;^2oo. Rains Cave is only about one- 

 tenth the size of that under consideration ; and were it not that 

 those who did most of the manual work, did it as a labour of love, 

 and (living close by) could conveniently devote spare odd hours in 

 the work, it could not have been accomplished at the low cost it 

 was to the Society. Had this cave been excavated as Messrs. 

 Salt and Millett have conducted theirs at Deepdale, the results 

 would have been practically nil, for the objects then discovered, 

 unlike those of the latter cave, were few and of no intrinsic value. 

 The reward of the one work was an interesting history ; that of 

 the other so many objects of marketable value— curios. What 

 scientific value attaches to the Deepdale work, is mainly due to 

 the circumstance that the "finds" themselves, as a whole, proclaim 

 their own origin and age : they are as distinctly Roman as the 

 electric telegraph is Victorian. The prime end of scientific cave- 

 digging is not to find relics of the past, but to ascertain the 



