Discovery of fossil Bones. 389 



DISCOVERY OF FOSSIL BONES AT BANWELL. 



An immense assemblage of fossil bones has recently been 

 discovered in Somersetshire, in a cavern of the Limestone 

 Rock at Banwell, near the west extremity of the Mendip 

 Hills, on the property of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The 

 circumstances which led to this discovery are as follow: — Some 

 miners engaged in sinking a shaft in search of calamine, inter- 

 sected a steep and narrow fissure, which, after descending 80 

 feet, opened into a spacious cavern, 150 feet long and about 

 30 feet wide, and from 20 to 30 feet high. From the diffi- 

 culty of descending by this fissure, it was lately judged desire- 

 able to make an opening in the side of the hill a little below, in 

 a line which might lead directly to the interior of the cave. 

 This gallery had been conducted but a few feet, when the 

 workmen suddenly penetrated another cavern of inferior di- 

 mensions to that which they were in search of, and found its 

 floor to be covered, to a depth which has not yet been ascer- 

 tained, with a bed of sand, mud, and fragments of limestone, 

 through which were dispersed an enormous quantity of bones, 

 horns, and teeth. The thickness of this mass has been ascer- 

 tained, by a shaft sunk into it, to be in one place nearly 40 feet. 

 Many large baskets full of bones have already been extracted, 

 belonging chiefly to the ox and deer tribes; of the latter there 

 are several varieties, including the elk. There are also a few 

 portions of the skeleton of a wolf, and of a gigantic bear. The 

 bones are mostly in a state of preservation equal to that of 

 common grave bones, although it is clear, from the fact of some 

 of them belonging to the great extinct species of bear, that 

 they are of antediluvian origin. 



In the roof of the cave there is a large chimney-like open- 

 ing, which appears to have communicated formerly with the 

 surface; but which is choked up with fragments of limestone, 

 interspersed with mud and sand, and adhering together imper- 

 fectly by a stalagmitic incrustation. Through this aperture it 

 is probable the animals fell into the cave, and perished in the 

 period preceding the inundation by which it was filled up. 

 The immense quantity of the bones shows the number of indi- 

 viduals that were lost in this natural pitfall to have been very 

 great. In this manner cattle are now continually lost by fall- 

 ing into similar apertures in the limestone hills of Derbyshire. 



There is nothing to induce a belief that it was a den inha- 

 bited by hyamas, like the cave of Kirkdale, or by bears, like 

 those in Germany; its leading circumstances are similar to 

 those of the ossiferous cavities in the Limestone Rock at Ores- 

 ton near Plymouth. 



The cave at Banwell has within these few days been exa- 

 mined 



