Geological Society. . 335 



animal in Pleistocene times, if indeed it was present before the close 

 of that period. 



January 7, 1903.— Prof. Charles Lapworth, LL.D., F.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair. 



The following communication was read : — 



' On the Discovery of an Ossiferous Cavern of Pliocene Age at 

 Dove Holes, Buxton (Derbyshire).' By William Boyd Dawkins, 

 M.A., D.Sc, F.E.S., F.G.S., Professor of Geology in Owens College, 

 Victoria University (Manchester). 



The Carboniferous Limestone, riddled -nnth fissures and potholes, 

 in the neighbourhood of Dove Holes, has from time to time, in the 

 course of the working of the quarries, yielded remains of extinct 

 mammalia of Pleistocene age. The latest discovery of a group of 

 mammalia, of far higher antiquity than the Pleistocene, is now 

 brought before this Society, The Victory Quarry, Bibbington, in 

 which the discovery was made, is excavated in a rolling plateau of 

 Carboniferous Limestone, from 1100 to 1200 feet above Ordnance- 

 datum, and forming at this spot the water-parting between the tribu- 

 taries of the Goyte, flowing past Chapel-en-le-Frith westward into the 

 Mersey, and those flowing southward and eastward, past Buxton, to 

 join the Derwent. It is a little to the north of the centre of the divide. 

 On the western side the limestone dips at an angle of lb° under- 

 neath the Yoredale sandstones and grit, which form the lower half 

 of a range of hiUs, extending southward to Buxton and beyond. 

 The upper half is composed of shales and sandstones of the Mill- 

 stone Grit Series, that rise in Black Edge to a height of 1662 feet. 

 The drainage of the eastern slope of these bills passes downward, 

 until it arrives at the limestone, where it sinks into the rock, 

 through the many swallow-holes which mark the upper boundary 

 of the limestone. There are no surface-streams in the limestone in 

 the immediate neighbourhood of the Victory Quarry, -which," from 

 its position, on the divide, could not, under existing geographical 

 conditions, receive the drainage from this western range of hills, 

 or any other source. 



In the course of working the quarry, in the beginning of 1901, 

 a cave was discovered, and fuUy exposed in the course of 1902. It 

 was about 90 feet long, 15 feet high, and 4 feet broad. It ran 

 nearly horizontally north and south, and consisted of a large 

 chamber and a small passage, both eroded in a master-joint. On 

 the south it contracted to a dead end, now quarried away. Its 

 continuation to the north is obscured by a great accumulation of 

 broken rock and clay, which has not yet been removed. It was 

 filled with a horizontally stratified red clay, containing angular and 

 roUed pebbles of limestone, and a few sandstone-pebbles from the 

 Millstone Grit and Toredale rocks. There were also a few pebbles 

 of white vein-quartz and of quartzite. Scattered through the mass 

 were mammalian bones and teeth : some waterworu, and others 



