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Pengellet, had yielded such interesting and important results 

 at Brixham and Torquay, caused the attention of enquirers to 

 be directed with especial keenness to those localities where 

 similarity of geological conditions seemed to offer to explorers 

 a favourable opportunity of realising like results. 



A prominent feature in all these cave discoveries, and one 

 that must at once strike the observer, is this — that without 

 exception, at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, at Banwell and Wookey in 

 Somersetshire, as in Belgium and South Devon, it is in the 

 Carboniferous Limestone that the cavities occur in which have 

 been accumulated the remains of animals now extinct, in many 

 cases in association with evidence of man's presence, either in 

 rude stone implements, or, as in the Trou de la Naulette in 

 Belgium, in human teeth and bones. 



It was a consideration of these facts which led the Rev. W. S. 

 Symonds to speculate on the probability that the Carboniferous 

 Limestone rocks which guard the course of the Wye between 

 Ross and Monmouth, and which are known to be pierced in 

 many places by caverns, might be foimd to yield additional 

 corroboration of the facts above referred to. With this view, 

 in company with your President, a great number of caves were 

 examined without any success, and the matter had been permitted 

 to sleep, when information was received that a party of miners 

 had found some bones in a cave on the Great Doward. A visit 

 to the spot revealed the value of the find, and measures were 

 at once taken to follow up the clue thus furnished. Permission 

 was obtained from Sir James Campbell, the supervisor of the 

 Crown lands on which the cave is situated, and last summer 

 excavations were commenced in Arthur's Cave on the Great 

 Doward, which have since yielded such gratifying results in 

 the discovery in large quantities of the teeth and bones of 

 Mammoth, old and young. Rhinoceros, Cave Lion, Cave Bear, 

 HyEena, Irish Elk, &c., and, in intimate association with these, 

 the flint knives and scrapers, of that ancient race of men who 

 in those far-off times shared with these strange beasts the 

 possession of the country, the features of which probably differed 

 greatly from those which at present meet the eye. 



