Oct. 29, 1874] 



NATURE 



531 



accessible even to rats, and which had been used as the candle 

 store during a period of three years without any previous loss of 

 the kind ; and in the same month another ate through one 

 of the workmen's basket between the hours of nine and one, 

 and carried off his dinner. A large^number have been captured 

 during the last twelve months. 



During summer, bees have frequently been seen and heard in 

 the innermost branches, of the cavern, very far beyond any 

 glimmering of day-light. 



The branches of the cavern in which the researches have been 

 carried on since the ninth Report was presented in 1S73, are 

 those known as the Long Arcade, Underhay's Gallery, the Cave 

 of Inscriptions, and Clinnick's Gallery. The exploration of the 

 former two has been completed, but the work is still, in progress 

 in the latter. The deposits have been, in descending order, like 

 those reported last year : first, or uppermost, the Granular 

 Stalagmitic Floor, from 12 to 30 inches in thickness ; second, the 

 Cave Earth, whicli has nowhere been more than two feet deep, but 

 has rarely exceeded one foot, and has occasionally thinned out 

 altogether ; third, the Crystalline Stalagmitic Floor, usually 

 exceeding the Granular Floor in thickness, but which had, in 

 certain places, been partially broken up and removed by some 

 natural agency before| the deposition of the cave earth ; and, 

 fourth, or lowest known, the Breccia, consisting of materials not 

 derivable from the cavern hill, and which appear to have been 

 introduced through openings or mouths of the cavern at present 

 choked up and unknown. The depth of this deposit has not 

 been ascertained, as its bottom has nowhere been reached. 



In the Long Arcade the surface of the upper or granular 

 stalagmite was occupied with large natural " basins," some of 

 them 12 inches deep, such as have been described in previous 

 Reports. The following points of interest were noted respecting 

 them during the progress of the work : — 



1. Tlie stalagmite forming their walls was harder and tougher 

 than that surrounding them ; whilst that composing their bottom 

 was comparatively soft and friable. 



2. The walls were traceable through the entire thickness of 

 the Stalagmitic Floor ; in other words, during the entire deposi- 

 tfon of the floor, basins had existed in it, the bottom rising with 

 the walls, but at a slower rate. 



3. The water which filled them in rainy seasons passed down 

 through the bottom in three or four hours at most. 



4. Immediately bene.ith most of the basins there was an 

 almost continuous interspace of .about half an inch in height 

 between the bottom of the stalagmite and the top of the cave 

 earth ; caused, no doubt, by the finer particles of the deposit 

 being carried by the percolating water through interstices to a 

 lower level. 



It happened that the exploration of that part of the Arcade 

 in which the basins were thus numerous was carried on during a 

 wet season, when the water, passing through the Stalagmitic 

 Floor, as just mentioned, caused two or three slips of the de- 

 posits beneath. In the largest of these a well-rolled flint nodule 

 was found with some remains of animals. No such specimen 

 had been previously seen within the cavern. 



At the junction of the Long Arcade, the Cave of Inscriptions, 

 and Clinnick's Gallery, there is a huge boss of stalagmite, in the 

 form of the frustrum of an oblique cone, 43 feet in basil circum- 

 ference, 14 feet along the slant side— which forms an angle of 40 

 degrees with the horizon, and thus gives a vertical height of fully 

 13 feet for the mass— and contains probably no less than 630 cubic 

 feet of stalagmite. Its base consists of the older or crystalline 

 stalagmite, and the upper portion, without any intervening cave 

 earth, of tlie granular variety, which not only surrounded and 

 completely encased the former, but, by flowing in copious sheets, 

 formed the thick Granular Floor, spreading without a break and 

 for great distances in every direction. Though inscriptions 

 exist in various parts of the cavern, this mass is, with perhaps 

 the exception of the .almost inaccessible Crypt of Dates, more 

 thickly scored with names, initials, and dates than any other 

 equal .area within the cavern ; and hence it has acquired the 

 name of the Inscribed Boss of Stalagmite. The inscriptions 

 occupy its outer or most exposed semi-surface, where in certain 

 places they form a network. Letters of all sizes, from some 

 fully three inches in height to others as small as ordinary writing, 

 cross each other and thus add to the difficulty of decipherment. 

 Some of them were cut with great care and finish, and must have 

 occupied a |large amount of time, whilst others were but hasty 

 scratches. It seems to have been somewhat fashion.able to sur- 

 round the inscriptions with rectangular p.arallelograms, varying 

 from 6-5 to 375 inches in length, by 5-5 to 3-5 in breadtli. In 



at least one or two cases the cutting of the parallelogram pre- 

 ceded Ih.at of the inscription, as the latter extends beyond the 

 boundary. Not unfrequently several names occur together, 

 whether within a parallelogram or not, and in each such case the 

 entire work seems to have been performed by the same hand. 

 At least four of them belong to the seventeenth century, and 

 the earliest of the series, so far as at present known, is that 

 of "Peter Lemaire, Rich. Colby, of London, 1615." Amongst 

 the names is that of " Deluc," probably the well-known geologist, 

 "Champernovnie," that of a well-known old Devonshire family, 

 and several prevalent in the immediate district. 



In 1S46 the Torquay N.atural Ilistoi-y Society appointed a 

 committee of three of its members, including the two superinten- 

 dents of the present exploration, to make some very limited re- 

 searches in the cavern. One of the spots which that committee 

 selected was in Clinnick's Gallery, immediately adjacent to the 

 incribed boss where they made a very sm.all excavation. The 

 materials dug up on that occasion were, as usual at that time, 

 thrown on one side, where they remained until removed in May 

 last when they were taken out of the cavern by the present com- 

 mittee. Before this was done, the surface of the mass was 

 carefully examined to ascertain what thickness had been reached 

 by the stalagmite which, as the superintendents well knew, had 

 been accreting on it during the last twenty-eight years. The 

 result was a small film not thicker than ordinary writing-paper, 

 and limited to two examples, each covering not more than two 

 or three square inches. 



Underhay's Gallery was found, when the work of exploration 

 was completed, to be about 10 fett long, from 2'5 to 7 feet 

 wide, and from 6 to 75 feet in height, the latter measurement 

 being taken from the bottom of the excavation. Before the 

 committee commenced their operations there, its mouth was 

 almost entirely closed with large masses of limestone. Notwith- 

 standing this, the late Mr. Underhay, for several years guide to 

 the cavern, forced himself into the gallery about fourteen years 

 ago, even though after passing the entrance, he must have found 

 the Granular Stalagmitic Floor within a foot of the roof in certain 

 places. Here he found on and slicking into the stalagmite a few 

 small bones which he succeeded in bringing out, when they were 

 found to be phalanges of human feet. Though these specimens 

 did not appear to be of an antiquity at all approaching that of 

 the cave-hysna and his contemporaries, the superintendents, 

 who were familiar with them, very carefully watched the pro- 

 gress of the work, in the hope of finding some further traces of the 

 skeleton ; and on reaching Mr. Underhay's very limited diggings 

 they met with a series of hones, all on and in the stalagmite, 

 some of which were certainly human, whilst others were as 

 clearly not so. The whole were at once sent to Mr. 

 George Busk, a member of the committee, wlio has been so 

 good as to forward a report on them to the effect that twenty- 

 eight of the specimens are human, and include an astragalus, a 

 navicular bone, a trapezium, a patella, a metatarsal, an ecto- 

 cuneiforme, phalangesof fingers and toe.=, and fragments of humeri, 

 ribs, and vertebra; ; that they appear to be the remains of an 

 adult individual of small size and delicate make, and probably 

 of a female, on which point, however, it is impossible to speak 

 positively ; that the bones are not necessarily of any very remote 

 antiquity ; that the remaining specimens are not human, but 

 belong to small sheep or goat, probably the former, which must 

 have been of the smallest Welsh type. 



When the very contracted character of this gallery, prior to 

 its excavation by the committee, is borne in mind, it is difficult 

 to understand how the remains were introduced. There were 

 neither potsherds nor charcoal, nor, in short, anything suggesting 

 th.it the bones were tire remnants of a body disposed of by cre- 

 mation, such as were met with in another branch of the cavern 

 in 1872 ; nor were there any marks of teeth on the bones such 

 as might have been expected had they been taken thither by a 

 carnivorous animal, or the relics of a skeleton buried or secreted 

 there, of which all other portions had been carried off by some 

 carnivore. 



The only noteworthy objects met with in the Granular Stalag- 

 mitic Floor during the year were a tooth of bear, fragments of 

 bone, one considerable " find " of coprolites, and charred wood on 

 two occasions, all of which occurred in the Long Arcade. 



The Cave Earth has yielded during the period under notice 

 1S7 teeth of various kinds of mammals, of which 94 occurred in 

 Underhay's Gallery, 63 in the Long Arcade, 20 in the Cave of 

 Inscriptions, and 10 iu Clinnick's Gallery ; 102 belonged to 

 hya:na, 36 to bear, 27 to horse, S to elephant, 8 to fox, 4 to 

 rhinoceros, i to lion, and I probably to wolf. There were also 



