E. H. Tiddeman—TJie Victoria Cave, Settle. 15 



broad no distinction could be drawn between that here and tbat in 

 the Cave, in larger specimens in the coal-shaft it was seen to have 

 been much crumpled, as if by lateral pressure. It seems highly 

 probable that the laminated clay in the coal- shaft was the result of 

 glacier water in some quiet hollow beneath the edge of the ice-sheet, 

 or its waning representative, and that it was squeezed after deposition 

 by the ice which left the till upon it. In the Victoria Cave the 

 deposit would have been protected from any such subsequent dis- 

 turbance. In the coal-shaft the scratched boulders show that it was 

 a glacial deposit. They may have been dropped into the mud from 

 the ice above. In the cave the limestone roof would prevent such 

 an occurrence. 



Since the British Association grant was made (1872), further 

 excavations have brought to light beneath all the talus at the mouth 

 of the Cave a bed of tenacious clay with scratched Silurian and other 

 boulders resting on the edges of the beds containing the older mammals, 

 and dipping outwards at an angle of 40°. Mr. T. M'K. Hughes has 

 suggested that we must bear in mind the possibility of this Boulder- 

 clay not being in its original position, but having fallen from the 

 cliff. It will be seen in the section that all the talus, and that of 

 considerable thickness, lies above it. Nor is the whole of the talus 

 which has fallen from the cliffs, and so represents a rude measure of 

 their disintegration, here shown, a much greater quantity lying lower 

 down the slope. If we were to remove all the talus, it would be 

 barely possible noio for the Boulder-clay to fall vertically from the 

 cliff into its present position. But were we to restore to the cliff all 

 the fragments of Limestone which it has lost since the deposition of 

 the Boulder-clay, it would, I think, be quite impossible for such a 

 fall to occur. 



Taking all the circumstances together, it seems more likely that 

 the drift here is the remnant of a moraine (lateral or profonde) which 

 dammed up the mouth of the Cave, and prevented anything but 

 water charged with fine sediment from entering it during the Glacial 

 Period. It is a rather significant fact that all the deposits below this 

 till are charged with mud, whilst those above it, consisting entirely 

 of fallen talus of great thickness, are, except quite at the surface, 

 completely free from it. Also many of the limestone fragments close 

 beneath the drift appear to have lost much of their surface from the 

 solvent power of water and carbonic acid; for they are rounded to 

 some extent, but not rolled. Perhaps one of the strongest pieces of 

 evidence that the older cave mammals mentioned at p. 13 lived in 

 this district only at a time previous to the great ice-sheet is, that so 

 far as we know the remains of none of them (except of Cervus elaphus, 

 which ranges from the Forest-bed to the present day) have been 

 found in any of the Post-glacial deposits of this district. Though so 

 common in the river-gravels in the Midland and Southern counties, 

 they are never found except in caves until we get much further 

 south or east. Leeds, I believe, is the nearest locality where they 

 occur. This would seem to imply that their remains were wiped off 

 the area by the great ice-sheet which occupied what is now the 



