ROMANO-BRITISH OBJECTS FROM DEEPDALE. 189 



circumstances under which these relics came to be where they are 

 found. This in a measure can be done in the process of digging 

 on the spot ; but in its fulness it is a subsequent work of the 

 study, arrived at by the careful collation and analysis of notes, 

 plans, and sections made during the work on the spot. 



Messrs. Salt and Millett will, I feel sure, not take it that I am 

 seeking to disparage their work and discoveries, when I say that 

 their chief result has been to indicate, rather than interpret, the 

 archaeological interest of the cave. It is to be hoped that before 

 long there will be a movement to raise funds for its systematic 

 excavation, headed, be it hoped, by this Society ; and then it will 

 be found that the practical knowledge and experience of these 

 two " cave-hunters " will be of the greatest service and value. 

 Meanwhile, it would be well if they kept intact the portion of the 

 cave most suited for this purpose I think few will disagree with 

 me in suggesting that this should be all, or at all events, much 

 of the First Chamber, not only because it is nearest the entrance, 

 but, still more important, because the deposits of its floor show no 

 signs of having been undermined and consequently broken up, 

 as is the case with those of the Second Chamber. Mr. Salt has 

 recently found bones in the cave earth under twelve inches of 

 stalagmite, and it is extremely likely that objects of human 

 manufacture — few and far between, perhaps, it is true — also exist ; 

 this earth bearing witness to the contemporaneity of man with 

 very different physiographical conditions from the present. Bone 

 caves are our chief manuscripts of the very early history of our 

 kind, and they are not too plentiful to be lightly neglected. 



More than two years ago Mr. Salt made a trial hole in the floor 

 of the small cave — a mere creep hole — on the opposite side of 

 the valley. He found that the surface soil was like that of the 

 larger cave, dark and containing bones and potsherds. This 

 apparently rested upon a red-yellow cave earth, without an inter- 

 vening stalagmite sheet. In this earth he found bones, and at a 

 depth of five feet a fragment of black pottery. Just recently, he 

 wrote to say that he hoped shortly to do a little more digging 

 here. 



