THE CRESWELL CAVES. 137 



met with. The bones were in various stages of preservation, though 

 lying side by side. Besides the remains of the larger animals, great 

 quantities of the teeth and bones of small rodents (Arvicola, &c.,) were 

 disseminated through the sand, which also contained cycloid fish scales 

 been gnawed by hyenas, of which numerous teeth and lower jaws were 

 and other fish remains. This deposit rested on a highly calcareous sand 

 cemented into semi-concretionary-looking masses, but containing no bones. 



The next cave, called " Robin Hood's Parlour," was about a hundred 

 yards further on. This cave contained five or six chambers, and was 

 lighted with candles. The excavations carried out here disclosed the 

 following interesting succession of deposits : — 



(a) Dark surface soil, (two to five inches,) containing fragments of 

 Roman and Mediaeval pottery, a human incisor, and some bones of 

 sheep, hare, hog, goat, dog, and the Celtic shorthorn. 



(b) Very hard limestone-breccia, (a few inches to three feet,) cemented 

 with masses of stalagmite, and containing a large number of bones 

 of hare, fox, horse, woolly rhinoceros, wild boar, Irish elk, bison, 

 reindeer, wolf, numerous flint flakes and chips, as well as one or 

 two flint cores, and a few quartzite implements. 



(c) Cave-earth —light-coloured calcareous sand, (a few inches to three 

 feet,) containing flint implements, split or chipped quartzite 

 pebbles, evidently fashioned by man, some decidedly Palaeolithic, 

 as well as remains of the lion, spotted hyena, fox, wolf, grizzly bear, 

 Irish elk, reindeer, bison, horse, woolly rhinoceros, and mammoth. 



(d) Red sand, containing comparatively few bones, but many worked 

 quartzite pebbles, and having near its base patches of highly 

 laminated red clay. The bones were of the same kinds as those 

 in the cave-earth, with the addition of the hare. 



The most important of all the discoveries in Robin Hood's Parlour, 

 however, was a small fragment of a rib-bone, on which was a rude incised 

 picture of the fore part of a horse, exactly similar to the Palaeolithic 

 figures that have been found in some of the Continental caves. At the 

 far end of the same chamber, in the same cave-earth, at a depth of about 

 one foot, was found a canine of Machairodus latidens, " a formidable 

 animal, with teeth not unlike sabres, with serrated edge," whose remains 

 have only twice before been found in England. 



According to Professor Dawkins, this cave furnished evidence of 

 having been inhabited by the same kind of Palaeolithic men as the caves 

 of the South of England, of France, Belgium, and Switzerland. A com- 

 parison of the bones and implements showed that the great majority of 

 the animals in this cave were killed and eaten by hyenas ; while the 

 smoothed and rounded surfaces of many of the teeth and bones indicated 

 that this occupation was occasionally interrupted by floods. While the 

 red loam (d) so abundant in the caves in the South of England was 

 accumulating, the hyenas which inhabited the cave were disturbed by 

 the visits of Palaeolithic hunters, who left behind them implements of 



