818 REPORT—1890. 
obtained. Two of these were in an upright sitting posture, the knees being bent 
close to the skull and the thigh bones still inserted in the sockets of the pelvis. 
The skeleton of the first was similarly bent, but the body had evidently been laid 
sloping, and not erect. All the skulls are similar in character, of the ‘long-headed’ 
type. The quantity of bones of other animals brought out of this layer is very 
great. The bones of horse, boar, bos longifrons, red deer, sheep, fox, dog or wolf, 
badger, wild cat, smaller carnivora and rodents, and four or five kinds of birds 
are numerous. All the lerger bones other than the human have been broken ; 
many split lengthwise, most likely by the cave men to obtain marrow. 
That the cave was occupied by neolithic men as well as used as a burial place, 
is shown in the presence of charcoal and burnt peat, with calcined bones. At 
18 ft. north side, depth 9 it. 6 in., evidence of an actual hearth was seen; a 
quantity of fragments of neolithic pottery was found, All the pieces were coated 
with charcoal on the inside. Ornamentation varied. Pot boiler, made of rounded 
grits, with marks of fire, and pieces of Silurian slates that may have been used to 
sharpen their bone implements have been found. The absence of flints is remark- 
able. A variety of bone pins have been picked up: some may have been hair-pins, 
others bodkins, and one undoubtedly was used to ornament the pottery, as the 
indentation on some pieces is the exact mould of the bone instrument. 
The bones found in the lower clay bed are different in character from those 
found in the upper layer. The human bones, together with animals associated 
with man, are not found in this layer; but in their place we have those of bears, 
alpine hares, foxes, and the reindeer. Most of the bears are Ursus ferox. Some 
await further determination, and may turn out to be those of the caye bear, The 
hares are specially abundant, more than one hundred individuals having been 
already obtained. 
Much work remains yet to be done. We have not reached the rock floor of 
the chamber, nor determined the original entrance into the cave. The exposed 
face of unworked material is now 22 ft. in thickness, all of it full of animal 
remains. The funds at the disposal of our small local society for this exploration 
are nearly exhausted. Yet we think that it is very desirable that the explora- 
tion of this interesting little cave should be satisfactorily completed. 
9. Physical Studies of an Ancient Estuary. 
By the Rev. A. Irvine, D.Se., F.G.S, 
Attention is drawn to some of the more important instances of the formation 
of new land by rivers which Lyell has discussed in his ‘ Principles,’ a process aptly 
termed by the French geologists ‘atterrissement.’ The formation of Sunk Island 
in the Humber is especially referred to; a genuine island just raising its head 
above the waters in the time of Charles IL., it had joined itself to the land and 
acquired an area of between 6,000 and 7,000 acres by the middle of the present 
century. Professor Green’s discussion of the physical geology of estuarine areas in 
his ‘Physical Geology’ is referred to as involving a series of conditions, all of 
which are more or less represented in the physical history of the Bagshot Beds of 
the London Basin ; the physical, the stratigraphical, and the paleontological lines 
of evidence concurring to point to such a gradual advance from strictly fluviatile 
conditions to those of a marine estuary as can only be explained by a slow subsi- 
dence with intermittent pauses of long duration, during which the relative levels 
of sea and land remained pretty stationary. 
The definite results of the author’s own work, which have been in part pub- 
lished, are then reviewed ; the organic origin of the green colouring-matter of 
many of the beds, and of the glauconite, the part played by vegetation in the 
production of limonite and pyrites, the formation of nodules of ironstone, the 
occurrence of lignite, the false-bedding of the sands and their interlamination with 
thin seams of pure clay at certain horizons, the possible origin of pipe-clay, are 
all briefly discussed with reference to the London Bagshots. Reference is also 
made to the author's discovery of remains of freshwater Diatoms in some of these 
beds. Additional facts are brought forward tending to strengthen the author's — 
o 
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