I20 RECENT CAVE-DIGGING IN DERBYSHIRE. 



been introduced into Britain by the Romans. Its absence from 

 other Pleistocene cave-deposits is extraordinary, but Longchffe 

 provided ample material for examination, and Messrs. Bemrose 

 and Newton have sifted the evidence in a masterly manner. 

 To quote their own words at length : — 



" The deposits might have been formed at a date subsequent 

 tO' Pleistocene times. That is to say, they might have been 

 washed in from a hyaena den, or other Pleistocene deposit, and 

 mingled wath later ones. In this way the occurrence of the 

 fallow-deer with the Pleistocene species would be accounted for. 

 The abundant remains of what we take to be fallow-deer in 

 nearly all parts of the bone-deposits necessitate a very careful 

 consideration of the possibilities of these deposits being of 

 recent origin. But the supposition that they are of recent 

 origin would imply that the surface of land in the neighbourhood 

 must have been sufficiently elevated above the swallow-hole to 

 collect water to wash the remains into the cavern ; and that 

 this land has been denuded, not, indeed, since Pleistocene 

 times, but since the redisposition of the bones in Roman or 

 post-Roman times, if the fallow-deer was really first introduced 

 into this countr}' by the Romans. Such rapid denudation does 

 not seem possible, and we do not think the supposition tenable." 



In commenting upon the discoveries at Longcliffe, Dr. Boyd 

 Dawkins declared that " the occurrence of the lower jaw of a 

 lion's whelp was the most important recorded from any cave 

 in this country." 



Whereas the Doveholes Cave was 90 ft. long, 15 ft. high, 



and 4 ft. wide at its mouth, and the Longcliffe one was half as 



long again, that in Cales Dale^ is only 40 ft. long, and its narrow 



passage only in one place is enlarged into a sufficiently spacious 



chamber to fo'rm a suitable den for a fair-sized animal. Not 



many bones were obtained from it, but many of those which 



were found were of special interest. 



1 " On Some Bones of the Lynx from Cales Dale, Derbyshire," by W. Storrs 

 Fox, Proc. Zool. Soc. of London, igo6, vol. i., pp. 65-72. 



