114 RECENT CAVE-DIGGING IN DERBYSHIRE. 



At the outset of the work of excavation the passage was in no 

 way choked with earth and stone, so that its extremity could be 

 reached without difficulty ; and the deposit containing bones was 

 only a foot or so in thickness. 



Far othenvise was it in the case of the Doveholes and Long- 

 cliffe Caves. These two- had many points in common. They 

 were both broken into accidentally during the ordinary processes 

 of quarrying. They both were filled, or nearly filled with 

 earth and stone, with which deposits the bones were mingled. 

 They both exist nO' longer, having been quarried away. But 

 the most important point of likeness was the fact that these 

 deposits showed unmistakable signs of having been laid down 

 by water. In short, it has been shown by Professor Boyd 

 Dawkins^ and Messrs. H. H. Amold-Bemrose and E. T. Newton^ 

 that each of these caverns is an old swallows-hole. 



Now, anyone who visits either of these localities to-day will 

 be struck by the fact that each of these caves was practically 

 on the top of a hill, whereas a swallow-hole implies a gathering- 

 ground for water. Professor Dawkins explains that the physical 

 conditions and the lie of the land have entirely, changed owing 

 to the denudation of masses of rock which existed at the time 

 when the caves were being filled up. He writes : 



" The drainage of their eastern slope " [i.e., the eastern slope 

 of the Yoredale Shales] "passes downward until it reaches the 

 limestone at its base. Here it sinks into the rock through the 

 many swallow-holes which mark the upper boundary of the 

 Carboniferous Limestone. There are no surface-streams in 

 the limestone in the immediate neighbourhood of the quarry, 

 which, from its position on the divide, could not, under existing 

 geographical conditions, receive the drainage of the range of 

 hills to the west or from any other direction. The existence. 



1 " Pliocene Ossiferous Cavern at Doveholes," l)y W. Boyd Dawkins ; 

 Qtiaiterly Journal Geological Society, vol. lix., 1903. 



2 "The Ossiferous Cavern at Longcliffe," by H. H. Amold-Bemrose and 

 E. T. Newton; ibid., vol. Ixi. , 1905. 



