ON KEN’’S CAVERN, DEVONSHIRE. 53 
were much more abundant in the rock-like Breccia than in the Cave-earth, 
none of them were of very distant derivation: no pieces of granite from 
Dartmoor, or of crystalline schist from the Start and Bolt, or even of slate 
from the more immediate neighbourhood, all of which have been found in 
the Cave-earth. 
The Breccia was so extremely hard and difficult to work as to render it 
necessary to split it out with chisels, which frequently played sad havoc with 
the bones it contained. These were sometimes so abundant as to form fully 
50 per cent. of the entire accumulation. To use the language of one of 
the workmen, “they lay about as if they had been thrown there with a 
shovel.” 
The progress of the work, as in most other cases, has rendered it necessary 
to qualify somewhat the first impressions respecting the bones and teeth. 
Instead of “exclusively the remains of bear,” it may be said that ‘ almost 
exclusively ” they are so ; for recently there have been found amongst them a 
tooth of some cervine animal, a tooth of a Fox, and one or two bones of a bird. 
Moreover, some of the bones are apparently too large to have formed part of 
the skeleton even of Ursus speleus. Nevertheless, it remains to be a fact 
that in this deposit there have not been identified any relics of Rhinoceros, 
Horse, Ox, Mammoth, Badger, Lion, or Hyena, all of which were so frequently 
exhumed from the Cave-earth; nor are there any traces of faeces, or, with 
one solitary exception, of gnawed bones to indicate the presence of the last- 
named animal. 
The bones found in the Cave-earth are divisible into two classes with 
respect to their colour. The first includes specimens of an almost chalk-like 
whiteness, and are very numerous; the second those of a dark tinge, and are 
very few. The dark hue of the second class is merely a surface discolora- 
tion. Beneath a thin superficial film, the bones of this group are just as 
white as those of the other. The colour of the specimens found in the Rock- 
like Breccia differs from that of each of the foregoing series; all of them are 
characterized by the same somewhat light coffee-coloured tinge, which, more 
or less, penetrates their entire substance. 
None of these older fossils appear to have been rolled, or to have been 
fractured before they were lodged in the place in which they were found. 
Fragments of jaws are numerous, and many of them contain teeth; but, 
with this exception, the relics lie together without the least reference to 
their anatomical relations. 
In many respects their condition is precisely the same as that of the spe- 
cimens in the Cave-earth. Thus, those found beneath large fallen blocks of 
limestone are crushed, the severed parts remaining in position, and com- 
monly held together by some firm cement. Again, other specimens are 
covered with a film of stalagmitic matter. Further, the bones from the older 
deposit adhere to the tongue just like those found in the Cave-earth, and 
no distinction can be drawn between the two series on this quality alone. 
These facts show, first, that the older formation, like the more modern 
one, was compact, firm, unyielding, and capable of offering resistance to a 
heavy falling block ; second, that, as has been already remarked in the case 
of the Cave-earth, the bones had successively lain exposed on the surface for 
a long period, and that the materials of the Breccia were introduced into the 
Cavern at many different times, with protracted intermittences ; third, that 
the fact that bones found in the same Cavern will adhere to the tongue with 
equal tenacity is not, in itself, trustworthy evidence that they are of equal 
antiquity. 
