TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 839 



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. 



The Section did not meet. 



MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 



The followiiig Papers were read :^ 



1. Evidence of Pre-glacial Man in North Wales. 

 By Hexey Hicks, M.B., F.B.S. 



The author described the conditions under which some flint implements had 

 been discovered during the researches carried on by Mr. E. B. Luxmoore and him- 

 self in the Ffvnnon Beuno and Cae Gwyn caves, in the Vale of Clwyd, in the 

 years 1884-86. These caverns were explored by them for the first time in 1884, 

 and some of the results were given by the author in a paper at the last meeting of 

 the British Association. The facts then obtained had led him to the conclusion 

 that Pleistocene animals and man must have occupied the caverns before the glacial 

 drifts which occur in the area had been deposited, as it had been found that, although 

 the caverns are now 400 feet above ordnance datum, the materials within them had 

 been disturbed by marine action since the Pleistocene animals and man had occupied 

 them. Moreover, glacial deposits, with foreign pebbles, wei'e found in the caverns 

 overlying the bones. Last year a grant was made by the British Association for 

 the purpose of carrying on the explorations, chiefly with the object of obtaining 

 further evidence as to the age of the deposits in the caverns. The results obtained 

 this year are highly confirmatory of the author's views, and have a very important 

 beaiing on the antiquity of man in Britain. It was found that a hidden entrance 

 to the Cae Gwyn cave had been blocked up by a considerable thickness of glacial 

 deposits which must have accumulated subsequently to the occupation of the cave 

 by the Pleistocene mammals. A shaft was dug through these deposits, in front of 

 the entrance, to a depth of over 20 feet, and in the bone earth which extended 

 outwards under the glacial deposits on the south side of the entrance a small 

 well-worked flint flake was discovered, its position being about 18 inches beneath 

 the lowest bed of sand. It seems clear that the contents of the cavern must have 

 been washed out by marine action during the great submergence in the glacial 

 period, and then covered by marine sand and an upper boulder clay. The author 

 beUeves that the flint implements — lance-heads and scrapers — found in the caverns 

 are also of the same age as this flint flake, hence that they must all have been the 

 work of Pre-glacial man. 



2. On the recent Bxploration of Gop Cairn and Cave. 

 By Professor Boyd Dawkess, M.A., F.B.S. , F.S.A. 



The exploration of Gop Cairn and Cave near Gop Hall, Newmarket, St. Asaph, 

 now being carried on by Mr. Pochin, Mr. P. G. Pochin, and Professor Boyd 

 Dawkins, has up to the present time yielded the following results : — 



The cairn commonly known as ' Queen Boadicea's Tomb,' and commanding a 

 magnificent view over the Vale of Clwyd, and to the Snowdonian range, over 

 the Irish Sea, and the plain of Lancashire and Cheshire, is composed of blocks of 

 limestone, and is about 40 feet high and about 300 long and 200 broad. We sunk 

 a shaft near the centre 26 feet deep, down to the limestone rock, and drove an adit 

 from the bottom in an N.E. direction and 30 feet long, both of which had to be 

 heavily timbered, and carefully carried out by experienced miners. In following 

 the surface of the rock the only remains met with were a few refuse-heap bones of 

 hog, sheep, or goat, and of ox or horse — too fragmentary to be accurately deter- 

 mined. These are, Irowever, of the usual kind found almost universally in Britain 



