TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 179 



great importance. The cave is situated to the north of Ingleborough, and consists 

 of several large chambers, often nearly filled up with earth and stones. The Com- 

 mittee began work by cutting a trench through a layer of stones broken from the 

 clilf above ; it proved to be resting on a dark layer composed of burnt stones and 

 bones, fragments of pottery, and a few Eoman coins. On following this layer 

 right into the cave, several bronze-gilt ornaments, of Roman workmanship, were 

 found, and otliers which certaiuljr were not Roman, but which bore a strong 

 resemblance, in design and execution, to Irish or Celtic works of art preserved in 

 various museums. The Celtic short-horn, the goat, horse, and pig seem to have 

 been the principal food of the dwellers in the cave, from the great quantity of their 

 bones which were discovered. 



The strange mixture of articles of luxury and ornament in so wild a place seems 

 only accountable by the supposition that the cave was inhabited, as a place of 

 refuge, by some well-to-do Romano-Celtic family, who carried off with them into 

 their place of retreat many of their valuables, cattle, and other property. The 

 date of this occupation seems to lie between the fifth century, as shown by the 

 barbarous imitations of Roman coins, and the first quarter of the seventh century, 

 when the kingdom of Strathclyde was conquered by the Iv orthumbrians. But, be- 

 sides this, evidence was found of a much older occupation. Underneath the Romano- 

 Celtic layer, at the entrance, pieces of chipped flints, broken bones of ox and bear, 

 and rude bone implements prove that man inhabited the cave at a lower level, 

 and therefore before the accumulatiou of the talus on it. 



The grey clay on which these more ancient traces of men rested offered a serious 

 obstacle to further examination, since it was more than five and twenty feet in 

 thickness within the cave, and contained no remains of men or of animals. 

 The Committee did not stop here, however, in their work. They have lately 

 sunk another shaft, and have been rewarded for the great labour of this last enterr 

 prise by the discovery of a still older occupation of the cave by hyfenas ; their 

 broken "bones, teeth, and coprolites show that they must have lived there in large 

 numbers, and the gnawed bones of rhinoceros, cave-bear, mammoth, reindeer, 

 &c. show on what animals they preyed. It is very probable that these remains be- 

 longed to animals that inhabited Yorkshire in the preglacial stage of the Pleisto- 

 cene period, and that the stratum above the cave-earth is of glacial age. The fauna 

 to which they belong invaded Europe before the refrigeration of climate that cul- 

 minated in the ice-sheet of Northern Europe, and remained in the area north of the 

 Alps and Pyrenees after the ice-sheet had disappeared from the lower ground. 



Part II.— 77(6 Physical Histori/ of the Deposits in the Victoria Cave. 

 Bij R. H. TiDDEMAN, M.A., F.G.S.* 



The cave was described as consisting of three principal chambers — a central 

 one running N.N.E., about 40 yards long, and two others branching off from it to 

 the right and left. It is probable that these chambers are really but one cavity 

 filled '^^'ith material up to inequalities in the roof which now separate the 

 chambers, for the floor has never yet been reached. 



The deposits were described in order of succession, beginning at the surface.^ 



No. i. The debris at the entrance is still forming and is undoubtedly derived 

 from the cliffs above by the frosts of successive winters. The author was of 

 opinion that no trustworthy calculations of absolute or relative time could be 

 based upon the thickness of this deposit, the rate of its formation being 

 evidently far from regular. 



Several floors of occupation are interbedded with this outside the cave, and 

 inside they He unconformably on the surface of the lower beds next to be de- 

 scribed. They have been treated of fully by Mr. Dawkins. 



No. ii. The entrance debris graduates below almost imperceptibly into a yellow- 

 ish-brown clay full of angular fragments of limestone, with occasional beds of 

 stalagmite. It is thinner at the entrance, but inside attains a thickness of 10 or 

 12 feet. Large masses of limestone lie on its surface, which have evidently fallen 



* For fuller details and later discoveries, see an article by the author in tire ' Geological 

 Magazine,' vol. x. p. 11 (1873). 



