Sept. 2 1, 1876] 



NATURE 



453 



to the Association, during the meeting at Bristol in 1875, 

 brought up the narrative of the exploration to the end of July of 

 that year. From that date the work has been carried on unin- 

 terruptedly in all respects as in previous years ; and it is intended 

 in the present report to describe the researches made during the 

 thirteen monihs ending Aug. 31 of the present year. 



The superintendents have had the pleasure, as in former years, 

 of conducting a large number of persons into the cavern, of 

 explaining to them on the spot the mode of working, and de- 

 scribing the facts which have been discovered, as well as of 

 setting (orth their bearing on palaeontology and anthropology. 

 The cavern has also been visited by numerous persons, who have 

 been conducted by the "Guide," i.e. the foreman of the work, 

 under arrangements laid down by the superintendents. 



The Great Oven. — Your Committee stated last year, that on 

 July 27, 1875, they began the exploration of the small passage 

 known as " The Great Oven," which connects with one another 

 "The Cave of Inscriptions" and "The Bear's Den" — the two 

 remotest chambers of the cavern. The Great Oven may be said 

 to consist of three reaches — the eactern, central, and western. 

 The western reach — the only one which has been explored — 

 extends tortuously from its commencement in the south-west 

 corner of the Cave of Inscriptions, for a distance of 58 feet, 

 where it is succeeded by the central reach. At its mouth it is 

 8 feet high, from the limestone roof to the bottom of the usual 

 4-feet excavations made by the Committee. Its width is com- 

 monly about 4 feet, but at one point it contracts to 3 feet, and at 

 another expands to 7 feet. Throughout its entire length the roof 

 and walls have the aspect of a well-worn water-course. 



There was no continuous floor of stalagmite, though here and 

 there portions of such a floor, perhaps never continuous, adhered 

 to and projected from the walls ; and pieces of stalagmite, as well 

 as detached * ' paps " of the same material occurred in the deposit 

 below. There was no reason to suppose that earlier explorers 

 had ever worked in this branch of the cavern. 



The deposits were a thin layer of "cave-earth," lying imme- 

 diately on "breccia," without any intermediate crystalline 

 stalagmite such as occurs in typical sections. At the entrance, 

 and up to 34 feet from it, the usual 4-feet sections failed to reach 

 the bottom of the breccia, so that its depth is undetermined ; but 

 at the point just mentioned, the limestone floor was found at a 

 depth of 3 "5 feet below the upper surface of the cave-earth, and 

 thence to the inner end of the reach the floor was found every- 

 where at a depth of from 2 to 4 feet, thus displaying a con- 

 tinuous limestone floor for a length of 24 feet, and giving a pretty 

 uniform height of 8 '5 feet to this portion of the reach. The 

 upper surface of the cave-earth ascended from the mouth to the 

 inner end of the reach, at a mean gradient of about I in 7, whilst 

 the limestone floor was inclined in the same direction at a some- 

 what higher gradient. 



The total number of " finds " in this part of the Great Oven 

 was 50. The remains yielded by the cave-earth included 2 

 teeth of hycena, 6 of bear, 10 of ox, i plate of a small molar 

 of mammoth, several bones and pieces of bone, including an 

 astragalous of horse, a few coprolites of hyrena, a portion of a 

 flint flake, and a flint chip. 



The flake (No. 6672) is of a pretty uniform cream colour, 

 almost a parallelogram in outline, i "4 inch long, 7 inch broad, 

 abruptly truncated at each end — one of which retains the original 

 surface of the nodule from which it was struck— and 3 inches in 

 greatest thickness. The inner surface is slightly concave, whilst 

 the outer is very convex, and consists of three planes or facets, 

 the central one commencing near the but end, whilst those on 

 each side of it extend the entire length of the flake. Its ridges, 

 and, excepting a very few small notches, its lateral edges are 

 quite sharp, and show that it can have had little or no wear and 

 tear in any way, and that in all probability it reached the spot in 

 which it was found, not by the transporting action of water, but 

 by human agency. It was met with less than a foot below the 

 surface of the cave-earth, 40 feet from the mouth of the Great 

 Oven, on Oct. 13, 1875. 



The specimens yielded by the breccia were ten teeth of bear 

 and a few bones, none of which call for special description. 



The exploration of the western reach of the Great Oven was 

 completed on October 27, 1875, three months having been 

 spent on it. 



The Labyrinth. — The existence of the chamber termed " The 

 Labyrinth " was probably known to but few persons when Mr, 

 MacEnery commenced his researches in the cavern in 1825, as 

 what appeared to be its two entrances must have then been so 

 nearly filled as to reduce them to the size of mere pigeon-holes. 



These entrances are respectively about 190 and 200 feet from the 

 mouth of what is called " The Long Arcade," from which the 

 nearest external entrance of the cavern is about ninety feet 

 farther. The name of Labyrinth was given to the branch of the 

 cavern now under notice on account of the difficulty which, 

 without a guide, visitors experienced in threading their way 

 between the numerous masses of fallen limestone and the large 

 bosses of stalagmite which v>ccupied its floor. "There was," 

 says Mr. MacEnery, ' ' a tradition of the loss of life here by a 

 young man who ventured to explore it without a guide. It is 

 certain that two gentlemen, who lost their light and way, spent 

 a night of horror here. Dreading to advance for fear of falling 

 into the pits, they remained immovable until their friends came 

 to'their relief."^ 



The Labyrinth extends from the Long Arcade, in a south- 

 easterly direction, for about forty-six feet, throwing off three nar- 

 row branches at and near its inner end. Of these the central one, 

 opening out of the south-eastern comer, and which it is proposed 

 to call " Matthews's Passage," after one of the workmen, leads 

 into The Bear's Den. 



The walls and roof of the Labyrinth, though by no means 

 without traces of the erosive action of flowing water, are in most 

 places extremely rugged, and suggest, by their fretted aspect, that 

 even the last of the numerous blocks of limestone encumbering 

 the floor must have fallen a long time ago. 



It is separated from the Long Arcade by a massive curtain of 

 limestone depending from the roof to the depth of nine feet, 

 across a space about eighteen feet wide, being, so to speak, 

 slightly looped up at each end to form two small entrances. 



Mr. MacEnery had conducted some diggings in the Labyrinth, 

 and had carried them to a depth of at least three feet at one of 

 the entrances, so that, by assuming a stooping posture, ingress 

 and egress became possible. In all other parts of the chamber 

 his work was much less deep. 



Omitting the large blocks of limestone, the deposits were : — 



First, or uppermost, a floor of granular stalagmite, from which 

 arose several large bosses also of stalagmite, one of which 

 was eleven feet high above the floor, whilst its base occupied a 

 circular space fully fifteen feet in mean diameter. 



Second, a layer of cave-earth, rarely amounting to more than 

 a foot in depth, and sometimes to not more than a few inches, 

 whilst it occasionally reached as much as two feet. 



Third, though it may be doubted whether there was a floor of 

 the more ancient, the crystalline, stalagmite in the Labyrinth, the 

 lower, and by far the greater part of the bosses mentioned above 

 was of that variety, and was covered with a comparatively thin 

 envelope of the granular kind, without any mechanical deposit 

 between them. 



Fourth, the breccia, or, soJar as is known, the most ancient 

 deposit in the cavern, lay immediately beneath the cave-earth, from 

 which there was nothing to separate it, and extended to a depth 

 exceeding that to which the excavations were carried. 



In order to achieve the thorough exploration of the Labyrinth, 

 it was necessary to break up all the bosses of stalagmite, with 

 the exception of the largest of them, of which a portion has 

 been left intact, it being believed that it shows strikingly the 

 utter inadequacy of the data derived from a boss to solve the 

 problem of the amount of time represented by a floor, and vice 

 versd. 



The upper surface of the cave- earth rose from the' mouth of 

 the Labyrinth to its innermost extremity at a mean gradient of 

 about I in 17. 



The total number of "finds" in this branch of the cavern 

 was 135, and the specimens they included were as follow : — 



Lying on the Surface. — Three portions of ribs and two other 

 bones, the two latter having been cut with a sharp tool, perhaps 

 by an existing butcher, and one bone of bat 



/« the Granular Stalagmite. — I tooth of lion. 



In the Cave-earth. — 32 teeth of hyaena, 7 of bear, 6 of fox, 

 3 of horse, 2 of rhinoceros, 3 plates of a molar of a young mam- 

 moth, I of lion, I of ox, and i of sheep (of doubtful position) ; 

 several bones and portions of bone, including a tarsus of bird, 

 and two pieces of bone apparently charred ; I coprolite, and i 

 small chip of flint. 



In the Crystalline Stalagmite. — 6 teeth of bear, of which 5 

 were m one and the same jaw. 



In the Breccia. — 215 teeth of bear, and a considerable num- 

 ber of bones, of which many are good specimens. 



The exploration of the Labyrinth was commenced on October 



See " Trans. Devon. Assoc," vol. iii., p. 238. 



