THE OSSIFEROUS CAVERNS OF DEVONSHIRE. 365 
Asinus fossilis, Bison minor, Bos longifrons, and, according to the 
late Mr. Bellamy, Mammoth and Hippopotamus (see Nat. Hist. of 
S. Devon, 1839, p.82). With regard to Hippopotamus, I can only 
say that I have never met with satisfactory evidence of its occurrence 
in Devonshire; but the Mammoth was certainly found at Oreston 
in 1858; and, unless I am greatly in error, remains of Rhinoceros 
tichorhinus were aiso met with there, and lodged by me in the 
British Museum. It may be added that the skull and other relics 
of a Hog were exhumed on that occasion, and now belong to my 
collection. There was nothing to suggest that the cavern had been 
the home of the Hyena; and whilst I fully accept Dr. Buckland’s 
opinion that animals had fallen into the open fissures and there 
perished, and that the remains had subsequently been washed 
thence into the lower vaultings” (Reliq. Dil., 2nd ed. 1834, p. 78), 
I venture to add that some of the animals may have retired thither 
to die; a few may have been dragged or pursued there by beasts 
of prey ; whilst rains, such as are not quite unknown in Devonshire 
in the present day, probably washed in some of the bones of such 
as died near at hand on the adjacent plateau. Nothing appears to 
have been met with suggestive of human visits. 
Kent's Hole.—About a mile due east from Torquay Harbour and 
half a mile north from Torbay there is a small wooded limestone 
hill, the eastern side of which is, for the uppermost 30 feet, a vertical 
cliff, having at its base, and 54 feet apart, two apertures leading into 
one and the same vast cavity in the interior of the hill, and known 
as Kent’s Hole or Cavern. These openings are about 200 feet above 
mean sea-level, and from them the hill slopes rapidly to the valley 
at its foot, at a level of from 60 to 70 feet below. There seems to 
be neither record nor tradition of the discovery of the cavern. 
Richardson, in the 8th edition of ‘A Tour through the Island of 
Great Britain, published in 1778, speaks of it as “perhaps the 
greatest natural curiosity” of the county ; its name occurs on a map 
dated 1769; it is mentioned in a lease 1659; visitors cut their 
names and dates on the stalagmite from 1571 down to the present 
century ; judging from numerous objects found on the floor, it was 
visited by man through medizval back to pre-Roman times; and, 
unless the facts exhumed by explorers have been misinterpreted, 
it was a human home during the era of the Mammoth and his 
contemporaries. In 1824 Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, 
was led to make a few diggings in the cavern, and was the first to 
