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73 
a month to find ourselves on the 17th of July, on our way to Whitchurch 
and the Doward Caves, again indebted to Mr. Symonds for chaperonage and 
instruction, whilst exploring the fossil produce of those curious bone caves, which 
modern geological research has made familiar to us. This was the ladies’ day, 
and a large and goodly company of them and their squires availed themselves of 
the fine summer weather for an excursion, which after allowing a passing glimpse 
of Goodrich Court.and Castle commence its real interest at the inn at Whitchurch, 
where, in preface to the ascent of the Doward, Mr. Symonds and Mr. Scobell had 
arranged in the parlour a splendid collection of the cave bones, according to their 
quondam proprietors, whether mammoth, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, cave 
lion, or bos-longifrons, with others. Here, too, were some flint knives and flakes, 
and the cores from which they had been chipped, at a period far later than that of 
the prehistoric quadrupedal cave-tenants. The scaling of the hill was too severe 
a prospect to allow of much lingering over these treasures, yet if any had been 
disposed to content themselves with the extemporized museum, and without 
inspecting the /ocus in quo of their finding, they would have missed fine prospects 
of the Wye, the Forest, the Goodrich, Whitchurch, Ross, and Hereford Country, 
and, above all, at one particular point of their toilsome march the sweetest view 
T ever beheld of the Town of Monmouth. It is caught through a valley between 
the hills, with the Wye towards Dixton to set it off, and I think the painter who 
could catch and reproduce the vista and the spires and glancing roofs at the end of 
it would not have to wait for a bid for his picture. 
On the western slopes of the Great Doward, Mr. Symonds, who was 
accompanied by Sir James Campbell, the deputy surveyor of Dean Forest, 
introduced our company to King Arthur’s Cave and one or two others, explaining 
the several sections, or layers, or floors, which carry us back and below the traces 
of human handiwork, and the silts of an ancient river, and a second accumulation 
of cave earth, to the relics of a glacial period and to those wonderful fossil remains 
in which these Doward Caves compete with Banwell and Cefn and other caves in 
Great Britain and on the continent. 
It should be noticed that the veteran Mr. Moggridge—the custodian and 
showman, if I may so call him without irreverence, of the Mentone caves—was 
with Mr. Symonds on this occasion, and afterwards joined our dinner party at 
Ross. I recall a conversation I had with him at the latter place about his talented 
son’s ‘‘ Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders,” a supplement to which has been 
recently published by Van Voorst—published too, alas! posthumously ; for this 
acute and painstaking entomologist has been removed by death from the pursuits 
of science and the study of insect life, to which he was making such notable 
additions. I will but return to the Bone caves to say that Mr. Symond’s valuable 
account of them was reprinted in the Hereford Times, and will find an honoured 
place in our ‘Transactions of 1874,” and that the Ladies’ Day passed off 
successfully from first to last, owing to the careful arrangements and courtesy of 
our guides, and those in whose province and property the caves are situate— 
Sir James Campbell, Mrs. Bannerman, and Mr. and Mrs. Scobell. The botanists, 
