TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 55 



One effect of this wide hiatus is the loss of almost all the human linkswhose 

 presence on this occasion would have pleasantly connected the present with the. 

 past, A glance at the lists of Trustees and the General, Sectional, and Local 

 officers in 1841 will show that the presence of scarcely one of them can bo hoped 

 for on this occasion ; and there is but little probability that any of those who pre- 

 pared Reports or Papers for the last Plymouth Meeting will have done so for that 

 which is now assembled. 



Nor are these the only changes. In 1841 Section C embraced, as at the beginning, 

 the Geographers as well as the Geologists ; but ten years later the geographers were 

 ili-tached, whether to find room for themselves, or to make room for the students 

 of an older geography, it is not necessary to inquire. 



Some years afterwards came an innovation which, until entering on the preparation 

 of this address, I always regarded as a decided improvement. The first Presidential 

 Address to this Section was delivered at Leeds in 1858 by the late Mr. Hopkins, 

 so well known to geologists for his able application of his great mathematical 

 powers to sundry important problems in their Science ; and from that time to the 

 present, with the exception of the Meetings of 18G0 and 1870 only, tbe President 

 of this Section has delivered an address. 



None of the local geological papers read in 1841 appear to have attracted so much 

 attention as those on Lithodomous Perforations, Raised Beaches, Submerged Forests, 

 and Caverns (see 'Athenaeum ' for 7th to 28th of August, 1841); and, as an effort to 

 connect the present -with the past, I have decided on taking up one of these threads, 

 and devoting tbe remarks I have now to offer to the History of Cavern-Explora- 

 tion in Devonshire. I am not unmindful that there were giants in those days ; and 

 no one can deplore more than I do our loss of Buckland and De la Beche, amongst 

 many others; nor can I forget the enormous strides opinion has made since 1841, 

 when, in this Section, Dr. Buckland " contended that human remains had never 

 been found under such circumstances as to prove their contemporaneous existence 

 with the hyaenas and bears of the Caverns," and added that " in Kent's Hole the 



( Vltic knives were found in holes dug by art, and which had disturbed the 



floor of the cave and the bones below it " ('Athenaeum,' 14th Aug. 1841, p. 626). 

 This scepticism, however, did the good service of inducing cavern explorers to con- 

 duct their researches with an accuracy which should place their results, whatever 

 they might prove to be, amongst the undoubted additions to human knowledge. 



The principal Caverns in South Devon occur in the limestone districts of Ply- 

 mouth, Yealmpton, Brixham, Torquay, Buckfastleigh, and Chudleigh ; but as those 

 in the last two localities have yielded nothing of importance to the Anthropologist 

 or the Palaeontologist, they will not be further noticed on this occasion. In dealing 

 with the others it seems most simple to follow mainly the order of chronology ; 

 that is to say, to commence with the Cavern which first caught scientific attention, 

 and, having finished all that the time at my disposal will allow me to say about it, 

 but not before, to proceed to the next, in the order thus defined ; and so on through 

 the series. 



Oreston Caverns. — When Mr. Whidbey engaged to superintend the construction 

 of the Plymouth Breakwater, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 

 requested him to examine narrowly any caverns he might meet with in the lime- 

 stone-rock to be quarried at Oreston, near the mouth of the river Plym, not 

 more than two miles from the room in which we are assembled, and have the bones 

 or any other fossil remains that were met with carefully preserved (see Phil. Trans. 

 1817, pp. 176-182). This request was cheerfully complied with, and Mr. Whidbey 

 had the pleasure of discovering bone-caves in November 1816, November 1820, Au- 

 gust and November 1822, and of sending the remains found in them to the Royal 

 Society. 



It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that, though Cavern-researches received a great 

 impulse from the discoveries in Kirkdale, Yorkshire, and especially from Dr. Buck- 

 land's well-known and graphic descriptions of them, such researches had originated 

 many years before. The request by Sir Joseph Banks was made at least as early as 

 1812 (see Trans. Devon. Assoc. v. pp. 252, 253), and a paper on the Oreston discoveries 

 was read to the Royal Society in February 1817, whereas the Kirkdale Cavern was 



