OSSIFEROUS CAVE OF BRIXHAM. 487 



I. Copy op Letter prom Dr. Falconer to the Secretary 

 op the Geological Society. 



' 31, Sackville Street, W., 10th May, 1858. 



' To the Secretary of the Geological Society. 



' Sir, — I solicit the favour of your bringing the subject of 

 this letter under the consideration of the Council. 



' It is well known that a great and popular impulse was 

 given to Geology in this country by the well-directed and 

 eminently successful researches of the late Dr. Buckland, on 

 the Ossiferous Caves of England. After the publication of 

 the " Beliquise Diluvianse," the subject in its general bearing 

 was regarded as pretty well exhausted, so far at least as con- 

 cerned the uniformyit of character in the fossil remains 

 found in the caverns, and their being referable to a single 

 geological period. Since 1823 the interest in the subject 

 has gradually fallen off, and it is probably not overstating 

 the fact to say, that there is hardly a general geological 

 question in which the majority of geologists in this country 

 take less interest at present than in what relates to the 

 Ossiferous Caves. The subject has not advanced pari passu 

 with the progress in the investigation of the Upper-Pliocene 

 and Post-Pliocene deposits. 



' It is understood that Dr. Buckland, before the close of 

 his valuable life, had intended to bring out a second edition 

 of the " Beliquia? Diluvianse," in which some of the question- 

 able views, so earnestly advocated in the original work, 

 would have been greatly modified. But unfortunately the 

 design remained unaccomplished, and the popular opinions 

 in the cave-districts, where collections were amassed, have 

 been mainly regulated by the doctrines embodied in the 

 work as published in 1823. 



' The consequences have been thus : — The Tunnel Caves like 

 " Kirkdale," which were the haunts of predaceous Carnivora, 

 and the Fissure Caves like " Oreston," that were filled from 

 above, have been popularly regarded as containing the debris 

 of the same mammalian fauna, and as having been overlaid 

 with their ochreous loam by the same common agency at the 

 same period. The contents of the different caverns were 

 thus considered as being in a great measure duplicates of 

 one another, and the exceptional presence of certain forms 

 in one case, and their absence in another, were regarded more 

 in the light of local accidents than as significant of any 

 general source of difference. Hence it followed tbat more 

 attention was paid to the extrication of the bones, and to 



