14 PROFESSOR T. MCKENNY HUGHES, M.A. 



paint of my notices was destroyed in the subterranean water- 

 falls and rapids. 



These chasms or funnel-shaped holes are the feeders of the 

 caves. They are only vertical caves formed in the horizontal 

 surface of the rock. They are known as Swallow-holes, Pot- 

 holes, Sink-holes, and in Italy as Dolinas. They have various 

 local names, expressing the idea that they are not part of the 

 more regular and common operations of nature : the Devil's 

 Chaldron, as in French, Chaldrons du Diable, Marmites 

 des Geants, Betoires, or, more simply named, they are the 

 Katabothra of the Greeks. 



They begin sometimes under the covering of drift, and, 

 when the opening grows too large, or the covering soil is 

 sodden and will not hold its own weight together, the surface 

 breaks in. Mr. Haythornthwaite, of Kirkby Lonsdale, told 

 me that on a farm of his above Wethercote Cave, after wet 

 weather, he once saw one fall in. 



How swallow-holes are formed in chalk has been described 

 by Prestwich.* 



The age of the cave-deposits is quite a separate question 

 from that of the caves themselves. The formation of the 

 caves was a time of destruction ; but the infilling of the caves 

 belonged to a time of accumulation when there was no great 

 scour through the caves, but the rain carried in earth and 

 stones, if there was loose drift above, or only muddy water if 

 the cave was nearly closed, or perhaps nothing was deposited 

 but the fine unctuous clayey residuum of the chemically- 

 decomposed limestone itself. Angular fragments disengaged 

 by frost or heat formed a barricade about the mouth. 

 Bones were washed in or carried there by beasts of prey 

 and man. Bucklandf referred most of the caves that he 

 explored to hyena-dens. Constant PrevostJ thought the 

 bones that occurred so thickly in the cave-earth in Franconia 

 were all washed in by torrents. This explanation will hold 

 only in exceptional cases. The bones may have been washed 

 from one part to the other of a cave, and a few do get washed 

 in from above. I have seen three sheep being carried down 

 towards a swallow-hole, and have found two drowned rabbits 

 and some dead trout on the gravel at the bottom of Hunt 

 Pot, on the flanks of Whernside. But we never see the 

 ground so covered with bones of various animals that a flood 



* Q. J. G. S. vol. x. 1854, p. 222. 



t Reliquice Diluviance. 



J Mem. Soc. d'Hist. Nat. Paris, t. iv, 



