ANIMAL KEMAINS FOUND AT CTSSBURY. 421 



ation. It might seem, at first sight, to indicate that the gallery 

 and shaft excavators had left this pit open for a considerable time, 

 departing herein from their usual custom. Snails, however, mul- 

 tiply with very great rapidity under favourable conditions, and the 

 damp and protection from enemies, such as, notably, the pig, which 

 such a shaft would have afforded, would constitute such favourable 

 conditions. And it must be borne in mind that but little weather- 

 ing of the sides of the shafts had taken place (see Professor 

 Prestwich, ' Journal of Institute,' 1. c, p. 386), and that the rubble 

 with which this shaft, like the others, was filled up, was not altered, 

 softened, or broken up, as it would have been if long exposed to 

 rain and cold. Taking all the facts together, those, to wit, which 

 are put before us in Colonel Lane Fox's Plate xv., with letterpress 

 in explanation at p. 375, 1. c. ; those which I have before me in the 

 very large collection of fragmentary and of perfect, of brute and of 

 human bones, and those which the snail-shells represent, we may 

 sum them up as follows : — A human skeleton, with nearly every 

 bone represented, including the often missing patellae and fibulae, 

 was found with its skull about 2, feet 6 inches from the bottom of a 

 shaft, which must have been 14 feet deep originally, but which had 

 got filled up some little way at the time of the falling of the owner 

 of this skull into it. The skull rested on its base and lower jaw ; 

 one of the heel bones I found when I cleared out the upper part of 

 the shaft from the 'red seam' marking the bottom of the ditch down- 

 wards, 1 foot 7 inches higher up than the skull. This os calcis was 

 lying upon a small outstanding ledge of the natural chalk which 

 had been left projecting inwards from the sides of the shaft, on 

 which it had caught, in what we must suppose to have been the 

 sudden and somewhat ungraceful plunge of the woman into the pit. 

 This fall must have bent the head round, as the crown was looking 

 upwards when it was found. The space occupied by the skeleton 

 from the os calcis to the crown of the skull was only 1 foot 7 inches, 

 a distance only some 3 inches or so greater than the length of the 

 femur ; but that even this distance should have been preserved, it 

 must have been necessary that a considerable quantity of support- 

 ing material must have accompanied the woman in her fall, other- 

 wise the entire skeleton would have been found flat on the floor of 

 the shaft. And, as a matter of fact, we found the bones of the pigs 

 above enumerated mixed up confusedly with the human bones and 



