3S8 Mr H. Gadoiv, On some Caves in Portugal. [Mar. 15, 



who discovered them and wanted to know what they were. I 

 saved four of them, packed them carefully in wadding and in a 

 small bottle, but this unfortunately was lost together with other 

 things during an accident to the pack mule. There were certainly 

 many of these rings, but we did not discover these tiny things 

 before the excavated soil containing them had been carried from 

 G to D, where there was a little more room for sifting and exami- 

 ning the soil. I have little doubt but that these rings originally 

 formed a necklace and consisted most probably of the mineral 

 described by Dr M. A. Ben-Saude as Ribeirite (nouvelle variete de 

 la Calai'te) ; cf. Compte Rendu de la 9 e session du congres interna- 

 tional d' anthropologic et d'arche'ologie r pr6historique, 1880, Lisbon, 

 pp. 693 — 696. I have seen such a "grains de colliers," but much 

 larger, found in various caves of Alemtejo and Estremadura, now in 

 the museum of the Academia das Sciencias, in Lisbon. 



Together with these human remains were found a few shells of 

 cardium. 



IV. Below this layer the soil consisted of compact red clay ; 

 we dug out a hole 4 feet deep and then sounded to a depth of 2| 

 feet more, with the same result. We had thus arrived at a depth 

 of at least 7 feet below the floor of the chamber as we found it. 

 Considering that, as far as we could make out, the stalagmitic 

 shell of the floor of the chamber G was on the same level with 

 that of the principal cave from A to B, our instruments reached 

 about 6 ft. below level AB. It is therefore possible that the true 

 rock-bottom of chamber G is still deeper and may contain other 

 remains. 



We then drove a shaft at the furthest end of the principal cave, 

 at A, 5 ft. long, 3 broad : one foot below the surface were a few 

 brittle scraps of bones, but nothing else. We dug 6 ft. deep 

 through red clay and sounded 2 ft. more clay. 



Lastly we drove a large shaft at B, 4 ft. deep, and sounded 1\ 

 ft. more, but found the same red clay. Two feet below the surface 

 was charcoal and some broken pottery, which however undoubtedly 

 belonged to an old water-jug as now used in the country. The 

 workmen recognised that sort of pottery at once, and the owner of 

 the cave explained that that portion of the ground had once been 

 levelled to enable him to remove the bats' dung from the inner 

 chamber. Between the stones in the antechamber was discovered 

 a flat and nearly round stone of great hardness, 10 inches in dia- 

 meter and perhaps 4 inches in thickness, its one surface was hol- 

 lowed out so as to form a slight depression. The stone looked 

 exactly like those in the Lisbon Museum, which are supposed to 

 have served for grinding corn by hand. 



