436 Rev. W. 8. Symonds — Hycena-den near Ross. 



and silt three or four feet in thickness, and out of it, when digging a 

 trench, in order to discover its physical position to the cave earths, 

 Mr. Scobell and myself picked up five pebbles, and Mr. Fitton a 

 greenstone pebble, all of which I have preserved and exhibit. It 

 appears to me that this stratified red sand and silt containing these 

 pebbles tells its own history as the deposition of an ancient Wye. 



It is true the present Wye flows at 300 feet below the mouth of 

 King Arthur's Cave; but those who know anything of the geology 

 of that river will recognize these pebbles as belonging to the silt of 

 an ancient stream which had its source, like the present, in the 

 heights of Plynlimmon, and flowed through the Lower Silurian 

 rocks and interbedded traps of Rhayader and Builth. Every one of 

 those pebbles out of that red sandy deposit must have been derived 

 from Silurian and Trap rocks, which are not to be found in situ until 

 after we have traversed the long tract of Old Sandstone through 

 which the Wye passes between Coppet Wood Hill, near Eoss, and 

 Trewerne, above Hay, in Breconshire, a distance, by the river, of 70 

 or 80 miles. 



4th. Below this river sand and pebbles we cut a section, showing 

 that the sand and pebbles rested upon a thick floor of Stalagmite, 

 covering a second deposition of cave earth. 



5th. Cave Earth, No. 2. —This thick floor of Stalagmite, which 

 underlies the red sand, nearly misled us on our first visit, for we 

 thought we had arrived at the limestone floor of the cave. On 

 breaking thi'ough it, however, we found cave earth separated every 

 few feet by layers, or thin floors, of stalagmite. This second cave 

 earth afforded many animal remains, and here and there we disin- 

 terred some flint flakes, principally from the upper layers. Two of 

 these I saw disinterred myself from below the thick stalactitic floor. 

 No other human relic was discovered, save a hone or whetstone, 

 which was thrown up by the workmen from the deep pit in the 

 presence of Mr. Scobell just before my arrival on the 20th of July. 

 Mr. Scobell did not see this whetstone in situ, and the workmen 

 threw it out as a piece of common stalagmite. On forwarding this 

 specimen to Mr. John Evans, he favoured me with the following 

 remarks : — " The whetstone has far more the appearance of being 

 neolithic than palaeolithic, and is very different from anything I have 

 seen from the French or English caves. It has much the appear- 

 ance of having served for grinding the edge of polished stone celts. 

 Does there seem any possibility of its having been of more recent 

 introduction than the teeth of hy^na ? The men who used it can- 

 not well have been joint tenants of the cave with the hyaenas." In 

 reply to Mr. Evans's question I may say that several persons also 

 questioned the antique age of this whetstone, and it has been sup- 

 posed that it was surreptitiously introduced for the sake of a hoax 

 by the workmen, or some other person when the workmen were 

 away. For my own part I dismiss the idea of the workmen having 

 done anything of the kind, as they were one and all nearly as 

 interested as myself in the search for truthful results ; and I have 

 a strong objection to believing that any Herefordshire man would 



