438 Dr. J. Murie — On the Sivatherium giganteum. 



earth in the fissure which was quarried to the depth of 17ft., and 

 bored to the depth of 20ft. 



2ndly. Above the thick stalagmite we found there rested strati- 

 fied sand and gravel of considerable thickness. It is my belief 

 that this deposit was washed into the cave by an ancient Wye, 

 which flowed 300ft. above the level of the existing Wye, and when 

 the land was higher than at present, before it was so much de- 

 graded by the atmospheric denudation of ages, and before it had 

 assumed its present aspect of deep valleys and glens. It is probable 

 that the soft Old Eed strata, north of the Great Doward, once rose 

 higher than the harder limestones of the Dowards, and that long ages 

 of atmospheric wear and tear have reduced their height since the land 

 was occupied by ancient man and the cave animals. And here I 

 may mention that my friend Mr. Lucy, who has done so much in 

 Gloucestershire for the elucidation of the Drifts, thinks it possible 

 that the drift sand and pebbles in Arthur's Cave may have been 

 derived from the washing in of the materials by the agency of melting 

 snow and ice from higher sites and previously deposited gravels. 

 The only reason why I object to this opinion of Mr. Lucy's is that 

 I recognize in these pebbles a river drift, the deposit of some ancient 

 stream which flowed as the present Wye flows, viz., through the 

 Lower Silurian rocks of Ehayader and Builtb. 



Years ago I showed that the Drift of the higher lands, as on the 

 platform above Symonds Yat, is a true Boulder-clay, containing large 

 rounded and unrounded erratics, such as the Machen Boulder, near 

 Symonds Yat, and in which I have never seen such river pebbles. 

 I therefore prefer the hypothesis I arrived at from a study of the 

 district, viz., that these pebbles were washed in by the stream of an 

 ancient Wye, before the excavation of the mountain limestone gorge 

 to its present depth, 300 feet below. 



Be this as it may, there rests that sand and pebbles, sealed by a 

 stalactitic floor, the droppings of the cave roof upon its stratified 

 layers, and separated from a lower cave earth by a mass of stalagmite 

 more than two feet thick. In that lower cave earth are associated 

 the remains of ancient Men and the extinct Mammalia ; and what 

 with the evidence of the old river-bed and the stalagmites, I doubt if 

 there be better authenticated evidences of the antiquity of Man in 

 the records of cave history. 



11. — On the Systematic Position of the Sivatherium giganteum 

 OF Falconer and Cautley.^ 



By Dr. James Mueie, P.G.S., F.L.S., etc., Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, 

 Middlesex Hospital, and late Prosector to the Zoological Society. 



(PLATES XII. AND XIII.) 



1. Introductory. — The fragmentary evidence attesting the presence 



of former tenants of our globe is just sufficiently tantalizing to permit 



of glimpses of bygone forms to be evoked ; and what is lacking in 



the relics themselves is supplied by the imagination or reasoned out 



^ Read at the Meeting of the British Association, Edinburgh, 1871. 



