212 report— 1878. 



We are not aware that this explanation of the presence of human bones 

 mixed with those of domesticated animals in a cave by the gradual or 

 sudden descent into it of such bones from a superimposed interment is 

 necessitated by the phenomena of any other cave ; it is obvious enough, 

 however, that the concave surface presented by an " initiatory area of 

 depression " would be very likely to suggest itself as a convenient site 

 for such a purpose to any race of men who might be sufficiently free at 

 once from the conventionalities of civilised life, and from the superstitions 

 of savage life, and might be glad to take an easy way of burying their 

 dead out of their sight. It must also be plain that no mode of burial, 

 whether practised by civilised or by savage men, would by itself account 

 for the scattering through so many (12-13) feet in depth of so many 

 human bones, of so many (9-11) individuals, and this in the absence of 

 any undisturbed burial of an entire skeleton or of a burnt body. 



If the hypothesis of a number of interments having been let down into 

 the "depression segment" will account for the presence of human bones in 

 that portion of the Longbury Bank Cave, the great abundance of certain 

 domesticated animals, viz., of the goat and cow, and the presence of 

 the pig and horse, as also of edible shell- fish — limpets, oysters, and 

 winkles — in smaller quantities, in the northern or larger portion of the 

 cave, as also the discovery in it and upon its natural floor of the ashes of 

 a fire-place, must be taken to prove that the main portion of the cave 

 was used as a human habitation. Some little weight, but not very much, 

 may also be given to the fact that of the few fragments of pottery and 

 bone implements found inside the cave, all were found either in this part 

 of the cave or on the surface elsewhere ; and that of the worked stone im- 

 plements, all but the single specimen found in the " depression segment " 

 came also from the north cave. It would have been strange if this cave had 

 not been employed for purposes of habitation by some one or more of the 

 tribes of the neighbourhood, who must have become acquainted with it in 

 some one or more of the periods in which it was, owing to one of the up- 

 heavals which have taken place along this coast, left as comparatively dry 

 and commodious as it is at present. The easily available upward sloping 

 entrance, admitting of refuse being got rid of without much trouble, 

 and the height of the roof of this portion of the cave as well as the very 

 considerable " floor space " free from stalagmitic drip which it must 

 always since the glacial period have possessed in seras of upheaval, put 

 this portion of the cave at great advantage for dwelling purposes as com- 

 pared with the " segment of depression." And this advantage appears 

 to have made itself evident to the pleistocene lower animals, as well as to 

 neolithic and later man. For though some not inconsiderable amount of 

 pleistocene remains, notably bones gnawed by hyaenas, fragments of 

 teeth of rhinoceros, and large if not always identifiable fragments from 

 the large bones of that or other animals of similar bulk, were found in 

 the north cave ; these animals were not represented elsewhere in the 

 cave. Further, it is highly probable that the north cave and the segment 

 of depression may at all previous periods have been connected by but a 

 small passage, the fragments from the roof broken off by the glacial cold 

 or by the shocks of earthquakes having been accumulated in a great mass 

 on the water-shed-like line of demarcation between them, and so having 

 rendered access from the one to the other difficult. The opening of the 

 north cave into the segment of depression is, from the top of the arch of the 

 cave down to the natural bottom, five feet in height; and on the east side of 



