ON KENT’S CAVERN, DEVONSHIRE. 47 
of stone, the best made, the most highly finished, and the only ornamented 
specimens are fashioned in slate. 
The piece of red sandstone was perhaps a spindle-whorl marred in the 
making. Good specimens formed of the same material have been found in 
the Cavern in previous years. It is rudely of the required form, about the 
size of a rather large whorl, but is imperforate. 
But for the more or less perfect specimens found in former years, it would 
not have been easy perhaps to identify the fragment of bone comb. It is 
but a portion of what may be called the shaft, both ends having been broken 
off. It must have been of the same type as those described in previous Re- 
ports, all of which had their teeth at one end; but it differs from all those 
found before in being ornamented with well-drilled, small, circular punctures, 
which traverse the shaft obliquely in two parallel series, the direction of one 
set being at right angles to that of the other. 
The red earthenware vessel is no doubt a pan of the kind used for flower- 
pots to stand in, and is clearly modern. 
The marine shells are chiefly those of the Oyster, Cockle, and Pecten. 
One of the last has, near its anterior margin, a small elliptical hole, which is 
probably artificial. 
The human jaw and teeth may be comparatively modern. They were 
submitted to Messrs. Rodway, the eminent dentists of Torquay, who stated 
that “several of the alveoli possessed peculiar irregularities, which confirm 
other unmistakeable evidence that the whole of the teeth belonged to the 
same individual; that the loose teeth were considerably worn away, parti- 
cularly the canine, at the end of which is exostosis, which was caused by the 
whole, or the greater part, of the mastication of later years being performed 
by the canine; that they were the teeth of an old person, probably a man ; 
and that they would be likely or certain to preserve their freshness of aspect 
for an indefinite period.” 
The cast of the fossil shell is apparently from the Oolite, and was perhaps 
lost in the Cavern by some geological tourist just arrived from the neighbour- 
ing Jurassic district of Dorsetshire. 
With the exception of the ground broken by the early explorers, which 
has been already mentioned, the Stalagmitic Floor was everywhere continu- 
ous. It varied from 2 to 32 inches in thickness, but rarely measured less, 
and commonly more, than 6 inches. It was generally of granular structure, 
but occasionally crystalline, and sometimes made up of alternate crystalline 
and granular layers. It contained numerous blocks of limestone and of old 
stalagmite ; the former had no doubt fallen from the roof from time to time, 
and some of them measured as much as 4 feet in length. In addition to 
such as were completely incorporated in the Floor, there were many, as in 
other branches of the Cavern, which were lodged in and rose above it, whilst 
others projected from it downwards into the Cave-earth. 
The imbedded masses of stalagmite were invariably of a structure unlike 
that of the floor in which they were lodged. In all cases, they were, at 
once, finely laminated and highly crystalline, the latter character being dis- 
played in a columnar or fibrous structure at right angles to the lamine, whe- 
ther the latter were plane or curvilinear. In some cases, these blocks, like 
those of limestone just mentioned, projected above or below the Floor into the 
Black Mould or Cave-earth respectively, whilst others were completely in- 
vested. It cannet be doubted that they were fragments of an older Floor, 
_which, as stated in previous Reports, and especially the third (1867), had 
been at least partially broken up at a comparatively early period in the 
