500 OSSIFEROUS CAVES OF GOWER. 



of ' Bosco's Den ' is breached by the waves and washed out 

 to a depth inwards of 31 feet. The two most eastern, namely 

 the Mumbles and Caswell Bay caverns, have been entirely 

 destroyed by the action of the sea, and a very few only of the 

 organic remains found in them have been preserved. These 

 are now deposited in the Swansea Museum. The next in 

 succession westwards are the group of contiguous caverns 

 which occupy the but slightly indented line of coast, stretch- 

 ing between ' Pwll dhu ' Head and ' Sheer Cwm ' in Three 

 Cliffs Bay. The best known of these are ' Bacon Hole ' and 

 ' Minchin Hole,' which have been especial objects of explora- 

 tion by Colonel Wood since 1850, and have yielded a large 

 quantity of mammalian remains of the highest interest and 

 importance. ' Bacon Hole ' and ' Minchin Hole ' are several 

 hundred yards apart, but between them there occur a series 

 of detached caverns, which like Minchin Hole are not 

 entered on the Ordnance Survey Map of Gower. They have 

 only become known through the persevering exploration of 

 Colonel Wood. The principal of these are the very remark- 

 able and instructive two-storied cavern recognized by the 

 quarrymen in the neighbourhood, under the name of the 

 'Devil's Hole;' then 'Bosco's Den' and 'Crow Hole,' and 

 lastly on the western side of ' Minchin Hole ' towards 

 Three Cliffs Bay, a cavernous fissure impacted with sand, 

 which Colonel Wood has named 'Raven's Cliff.' One cavern, 

 near Langland Bay, called ' Ram-Tor,' and presumed to be 

 ossiferous, still remains unexplored. 



Dr. Buckland gives a brief account in the ' Reliquise Dilu- 

 vianse' of a deposit of fossil bones discovered in 1792, in a 

 cavity in the limestone of the ' Crawley Rocks ' l in Oxwich 

 Bay, which is no longer in existence. With this exception, 

 no bone-caves have as yet been disclosed in Oxwich Bay 

 or Port Eynon Bay. From the western point of the latter 

 to the Worm's Head, the general alignment of the coast is 

 comparatively straight, with a slight deflexion to the IS"., and 

 with few indentations. The limestone cliffs are here lofty, 

 exceedingly steep and precipitous, and about the middle of 

 the stretch, on the face of the ' Yellow Top ' rock occur the 

 two contiguous cavernous fissures, commonly known as the 

 ' Paviland Caves,' discovered in 1821, and so celebrated 

 through the researches of Dr. Buckland. On the western 

 side of the Gower coast the limestone strata have been 

 denuded in Rhos Sili Bay ; but to the north of Llanmadoc 

 Hill, where they reappear in a narrow belt, a cave buried in 

 drift sand was casually disclosed, through quarrying opera- 

 tions in 1839, on the point called ' Spritsail-Tor.' It was 



1 See aiitea, p. 354 — [Ed.] 



