TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 89 



whole when dry easily separating into laminae, often not thicker than 

 the 3^th of an inch ; the reddish beds effervesce with acids, but not so the 

 ochrey micaceous ones. The whole series varies from 1 8 inches to two 

 feet and a half in depth in different places, and rests upon a stratum of 

 marl or clay two feet thick, which imbeds a few water-worn pebbles of 

 greywacke and angular pieces of limestone, and a little way from 

 the top contains some fragments of bone. Lower down the proportion 

 of the latter increases, so much so that the middle portion consists almost 

 wholly of a mass of broken and splintered bones much decayed, and 

 some teeth, closely jammed together by a mixture of clay and commi- 

 nuted bone earth. Among the teeth those of bears, hyaenas, the rhino- 

 ceros, of ruminating animals, and probably of the hippopotamus have 

 been recognised, and on a few of the broken bones are evident marks of 

 the teeth of camivora. Tliis stratum imperceptibly passes below into 

 another of very compact coarse diluvium of clay and pebbles of clayslate, 

 with a few splintered bones and broken stalactites, also about two feet 

 thick and reaching down to the present artificial floor. On breaking 

 up this floor the writer found a series of beds of coarse and fine sand, 

 alternating with others of loam and clay, precisely as may be seen on 

 the bank of a river, but without any bones, pebbles, or shells; the whole 

 about three feet thick, and resting on the solid limestone rock. 



Another section at the extremity of the lateral fissure on the right 

 corresponds in every respect, except that in the middle of the bone 

 stratum is an additional interpolated series, about 20 inches thick, of the 

 thin beds of parti-coloured silts, already described, which here contain 

 a few small pieces of bone, and alternate with other beds of fine cal- 

 careous matter, probably bone earth. This series has also a horizontal 

 arrangement, and seems to have been deposited by water in a hollow in 

 the bone stratum. 



Mr. Bowman then describes the strata found below the present floor 

 in the anterior portion of the cavern, the material that formerly blocked 

 it up even to the roof having been long since removed. For some yards 

 round B the floor is a perfectly horizontal layer of stratified stalagmitic 

 matter, 18 inches to two feet thick ; and below it is a bed of yellowish 

 ochrey loam, very different to the marly diluvium already described, but 

 containing, like it, smooth pebbles of primitive rocks, pieces of lime- 

 stone, broken stalactites, with some spHntered bones and teeth of car- 

 nivora and ruminantia. It is of uniform complexion down to the solid 

 rock, a depth of from four to five feet. In another excavation nearer the 

 mouth of the cave the stalagmitic matter is replaced by sand, but below 

 is the same ochrey loam, &c., with molar teeth of bears and fragments 

 of jaws, and a few quartz pebbles ; while in a third, at the very entrance, 

 about three feet of gravel and coarse sand was found under the loam, 

 without bones, some of tlie pohshed clay slate pebbles being from nine 

 inches to a foot in diameter. Below is the solid rock slanting inwards 

 from each side, and about five feet lower in the middle than the foot- 

 path in the front of the cave. 



There are, therefore, at the extremity of the openings, 1st, a series 

 of fine silts ; 2nd, the marl overlying and passing into the 3rd or bone 



