1 40 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



of breathing, the heart's action, consciousness, and volition. 

 In some cases these lasted for several, and in one case for 

 ii J hours. 



Mr. Busk enquired whether salt and water of the same 

 density as the blood would have produced similar effects, 

 for transfusion of this mixture in cholera cases had prolonged 

 life, even for sixteen hours. 



Dr. Sharpey said the injection of salt and water had never 

 effected a permanent cure ; febrile symptoms had generally 

 supervened and carried off the patient. He had tried, in 

 cases of asphyxia, to restore animation by transfusion, but 

 without success. 



Dr. Falconer gave some particulars about the bone caves 

 in Devonshire, towards the excavation of which the Royal 

 Society had granted 100. They had the same general 

 character as those explored by Buckland twenty-five years 

 ago, but which had been since then much neglected. One 

 group of ossiferous fissures in the limestone, containing bones 

 of animals no longer living in Britain, was on the slope 

 of Windmill Hill, near Brixham. 1 It had been purchased 

 some time back, apparently as a speculation, by a dyer, who 

 was asking too high a price for liberty to excavate it. The 

 other cave, Kent's Hole, near Torquay, had been known since 

 1615. Here excavations were undertaken by the Rev. J. 

 MacEnery, who died in 1843, after working on them for 

 some twenty years. His collections were unfortunately 

 dispersed, and his manuscripts bought for wastepaper by a 

 tailor. In some of these caves the contents apparently 

 belonged to two widely separated epochs : the lower to the 

 Pliocene, the upper to the Glacial. A cave in Gower, which 

 contained bones of an African rhinoceros, proved marked 

 changes of level, for it was now many feet above the sea, 

 and yet contained sea-shells. As regards the presence of the 



1 For the history of the excavation of the Brixham Caves and Kent's 

 Hole, see Memoir of William Pengelly (1897), pages 296-314, under whose 

 indefatigable supervision the work was effected. MacEnery's manuscript, 

 at first supposed to have perished, was happily recovered and was printed, 

 also by Pengelly's care, in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 

 vol iii. pages 196-482. 



