128 Mr. Cumberland on the Accumulation of Bones in [Feb. 



sition to believe it to have been the work of the hyaena, I am free 

 to confess does not satisfy me, since there is a much easier way 

 to account for it, founded on a great event, now, I believe, dis- 

 puted by no party of geologists whatever, and a strong proof of 

 which we may acquire from the limestone caves near Plymouth, 

 if any were wanted. 



Wherever there are limestone rocks, or any usually termed 

 secondary, immense irregular cavities are found, whose forms 

 distinctly point out their origin to be from subsidence, and these 

 are so numerous in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Somersetshire, 

 that it is needless to insist on them. Those of the Peak, Pool's 

 Hole, and those near Wells, are well known ; but smaller ones 

 are, in the neighbourhood of Bristol, continually opened by our 

 quarrymen ; and I have witnessed several, now broken up, parti- 

 cularly one at Redland, of some hundreds of feet in length, at 

 different levels, yet connected by narrow passages with many 

 smaller ones ; the whole resembling, when the section was laid 

 open, those settlements we often find in ancient castle walls, 

 when undermined and sinking to decay. 



These short of cavities are called in the west of England 

 swallowils, from their being the conveyers of land-waters to the 

 interior reservoirs in the limestone hills, and usually commence 

 with a funnel-shaped cavity on the levels on the tops of the hills, 

 and thus the great spring at Chedder is fed, which, in the 

 autumn, bursts out from overflowing reservoirs : thus decidedly 

 proving that great and terrible subsidences have occurred at some 

 time or other, among these stratified hills, whose interstices 

 probably were once nearly horizontal, resting on intervening 

 clay, marl, or schistous clay, the material of which was no doubt 

 the body that helped to launch them from their original position 

 when first sapped by that fluid which once covered the earth, 

 and by its lateral and downward pressure produced those effects 

 which must have been the cause of a considerable change in the 

 position of the rocks, such as is made evident on the sides of the 

 Avon, near Bristol. 



Now, Sir, I apprehend what the quarrymen did at Oreston, 

 near Plymouth, viz. opening a way into one of these cavities 

 by art, nature had done in the vale of Pickering by the action of 

 the retreating waters of the great Noahtic flood, which undoubt- 

 edly must have torn away many large fragments of the sides of 

 the hills in its passage downwards ; and hence the discovery of 

 this winding cave, so common in limestone hills. Thus much 

 for the facts of the two caves. And it so happens, that in the 

 cave, one mile from Plymouth, so effectually examined by 

 Mr. Joseph Coldle of this place, there were found (and I have 

 seen them) teeth of horses In abundance, those of deer, of seve- 

 ral species of kine, many connected with their jaws, several 

 specimens of wolves' and hyaenas', a few of tigers', and of other 

 animals a great number, some resembling^ otters' ; they are also 



