332 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
natural shape of any bone, but appears to have been shaped for 
an awl or piercer by some ancient dweller in the cave. The 
groove along its side shows that it is made from the shin, 
probably of a Deer, and its surface is blackened like the others, 
one of which is the scapula of a Bear. Soon, other bones of the 
Bear turned up, blackened in the same way. I separated the 
“old bones,’ as we called them, with care from those in the 
upper stratum, and we found among the former, on examination, 
a human vertebra and finger-bone. The stones from this stratum 
were watched as they were thrown out, and, as might be expected, 
they afforded more indications of human occupation. Some were 
rounded stones broken in two, with the flat surface worn by 
rubbing or grinding. Others had edges more or less sharp, but 
chipped as if used for cutting or cleaving. Nor was this all. 
Throughout both these strata we found pieces of burnt wood, and 
about half-way down through the second stratum occurs a marked 
line, like an old floor, black in places with charcoal. 
This, however, was not the lowest horizon inhabited by the 
cave-men, for, far below the black line, we found more charcoal, 
not only in the second stratum, but deep in that below it. 
Almost from the commencement of our digging we had come 
upon huge blocks of stalagmite of a larger size than I had ever 
seen before, but disconnected, as if an old floor of stalagmite had 
been broken up and the fragments tossed about. As we got 
deeper, below the two strata above-described, we found the 
stalagmite blocks embedded in a pale, sandy earth, forming 
together a third stratum. Yet even in this the charcoal appeared. 
Lower again, we came on a portion of the stalagmite floor that 
had not been broken up, but remained in situ. To this the crow- 
bar was applied. Surely, I thought, we shall find nothing here. 
Yet, still out of the very stalagmite itself, and from under it, we 
took more bones, and teeth, too; whole jaws of a large Bear, with 
both canine and molar teeth, the bones of his limbs and feet, 
vertebree and ribs. These were of a pale buff-colour like the 
stalagmite, and required a glue-bath to render them durable, as 
they were very brittle. But we had not yet done. Under the floor 
of stalagmite we picked out an astragalus of Irish Elk that looks 
as large beside a similar bone of an Ox as a hen’s egg would look 
beside a pigeon’s; also a bone of deer, which Prof. Leith Adams 
suspects to be Reindeer, was found in this deep position. 
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