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REPORTS. 939 
NOTTINGHAM NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY.—July 31st was set apart for 
the annual excursion of this Society, and the district chosen was that of Creswell 
Crags, to which, by the kind permission of the Duke of Portland, were added 
the-abbey and grounds of Welbeck. Creswell Crags are situated some half- 
mile from the village. They consist of a north and south cliff, the rocks in some 
places reaching sixty feet in height, and forming a picturesque defile in the local 
ridge of limestone through which flows the river Wollen, recently dammed up 
as a lake, a stream or shirebrook which parts Nottinghamshire from Derbyshire. 
At the foot of the northern cliff are two extensive caves, which, along with the 
one in the southern or Nottinghamshire cliff have recently been explored by the 
Rev. J. M. Mello, Chesterfield. Mr. L. Lee, honorary secretary of the Society, 
had arranged for the caverns to be illuminated. The Derbyshire portion of the 
caves was first examined. The lines of the recent floors were traced, and no 
small surprise was expressed at the great amount of debris which in the course 
of the explorations had been removed therefrom—debris which, as the prospectus 
of the excursion set out, contained remains of the cave lion, leopard, cave 
bysena, machairodus, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, wolf, grizzly bear, brown 
bear, bison, reindeer, and the Irish elk. The Nottinghamshire cave was also 
examined. At the mouth or entrance of this cave, amidst scenery which was 
classed by some of the members as the grandest they had ever seen, 
the company were favoured with a discourse upon the physical 
features of the district by Mr. William Stevenson, in the course 
of which he pointed out that the Creswell Caves were attributed to 
aqueous action, and were referred to one. or more of the numerous submersions 
which the country has been subject to in recent geological times. With regard 
to the animals whose remains were found in the debris of these caverns, it was 
pointed out that the presence of fragments of bones was but poor evidence of 
the animals themselves inhabiting the caves, as their remains were found in the 
alluvium of the valleys and in the fractures and minor fissures of the rocks; but 
the evidence of their inhabiting the district was held to be incontestible. The 
oldest or extinct species pointed to convulsive actions of nature, in the form of 
mighty floods, where the bones of the animals themselves were gathered, along 
with the fragments of local and other rocks, and washed into these fissures or 
caves in the rocks, the preservation of the same being attributed to the calcareous 
nature of their surroundings. The lecturer dwelt at some length upon the 
explorations carried on in the Pleasley Valley by the Nottingham Naturalists’ 
Society in 1865, and the additions thus made to the local museum, especially in 
the jaw of the Felis lynx, a carnivorous animal, no remains of which, with the 
exception of a solitary tooth in the British Museum, had previously been found 
in the deposits of this country, and he concluded by describing the Pleasley 
Caves as being analogous to those in the Creswell neighbourhood. ‘The Society 
made another visit to the same locality on August 21st. 
NOTTINGHAM LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.— 
Excursions in July and August:—July 10th.—Hxcursion to Stoke-on-Trent, 
Trentham, and Longton. August 16th.—The second excursion of the season 
was to Dale Abbey. A party of members numbering nearly thirty went by train, 
at 230P.m., to West Hallam, and walked thence to Dale. Heavy rain prevented 
anything from being done until after tea, when the party, under the guidance of 
Mr. Scott White, inspected the remains of the Abbey, which have recently been 
brought to light by the exertions of the Derbyshire Archeological Society, in 
excavations on the site of the Abbey. Inthe absence (through illness) of Mr. J. 
Charles Cox, a paper by Mr. Hope was read by Mr. White. From this it appears 
that the Abbey was founded in 1160, as a monastery of Austin Canons. About 
half the area of the Abbey buildings have been laid bare, consisting of a choir, 
with a double quasi-aisle to the south, central tower, nave, with north aisle, and 
north and south transepts, with a large chapel on the east of the north transept. 
After a close inspection of the Abbey, the monuments and encaustic tiles which 
are preserved in several sheds in the village were examined. For full particulars 
of these reference should be made to Mr, Hope’s paper inthe “ Journal of the 
Derbyshire Archeological Society” for this year. The church and hermitage 
were afterwards visited, and the party returned to Nottingham at a late hour, 
vid West Hallam. 
