RECENT CAVE-DIGGING IN DERBYSHIRE. 12 1 



About 1894 Dr. Melland, of Manchester, then a student at 

 Owens College, entered the cave and carried off one or more 

 bones, which he presented to Professor Boyd Dawkins, who 

 identified them as belonging to Lynx. Up to that time bones 

 of this species had only twice been found in Britain. In 1866 

 part of a skull and the right ramus of the lower jaw of the 

 Ly?ix borealis were unearthed in Pleasley Vale,^ on the borders 

 of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and are now in the 

 Nottingham University Museum. And about fourteen years 

 later the late Mr. James Backhouse, of York, found a humerus 

 and metatarsal of the same species in Teesdale.- 



There appears to be no sort of record of Dr. Melland's find, 

 and the cave was left undisturbed again until 1897. In the 

 spring of that year all the contents of the chamber, or den, were 

 removed. The remains of Lytix then found were as follows : — 



I right ramus of the lower jaw, with its teeth ; 



I right upper camassial tooth ; 



I right premaxilla, containing its 3 incisors ; 



3 canines ; 



I humerus — the shaft and distal end; 



I ulna — proximal end only ; 



I axis vertebra; 



I left OS innominatum — almost perfect ; 



I right OS innominatum — a fragment, and evidently from 

 a different individual; 



I left femur — shaft and proximal end ; 



I left femur — the head only ; 



5 tarsal bones; 



6 metapodials ; 



1 1 phalanges, including a terminal one. 

 These altogether make up a total of thirty-five specimens as 

 compared with four only which had hitherto been recorded. 



1 "British Pleistocene Mammalia," part iii., pp. 172-176 (Palseontographical 

 Soc, vol. for 1868). 



- Geological Magazine, vol. for 18S0, pp. 346-34S. 



