OSSIFEROUS CAVES OF GO WEE. 509 



manner, that there was a very distinct and well-marked bony 

 septum, connecting the nasal bones with the incisives. This 

 important specimen unluckily met with a grievous accident 

 in a public museum, by which the skull was crushed and the 

 fragments lost ; but the palate, with the maxillaries and mo- 

 lars of either side, remain to prove that it belonged to Rhin. 

 hemitoechus. The other cranium was discovered entire, but 

 fractured in extricating it from the deposit. The posterior 

 half, represented by the accompanying figures (see Plates 

 XXIII. and XXIV.) was preserved, and it agreed very closely 

 in form with the Clacton cranium, figured in the ' British 

 Fossil Mammalia,' and with another of the same species, 

 from Northamptonshire, now in the Palaeontological collec- 

 tion of the British Museum. 1 Among the other specimens of 

 Rhinoceros were : 4 fragments of upper jaws containing teeth ; 

 2 upper maxillaries of very young animals, containing the 

 milk teeth ; 8 lower jaws, of which three are of very young 

 individuals, with milk teeth only ; 1 atlas vertebra nearly 

 entire ; several dorsal and lumbar vertebrae ; 1 scapula ; 

 1 humerus, showing the inferior half of the shaft and the 

 condyles ; 1 radius nearly entire ; 4 femora, two of which 

 are of very young or foetal animals ; 2 astragali, one of 

 them superficially gnawed ; 1 tibia and fibula in fine pre- 

 servation ; 1 calcaneum ; 5 ossa innominata, some of them 

 showing the cup of the acetabulum perfect. The above list 

 is intended to show the abundance in which the remains of 

 Rhinoceros IwmitoecJius occur in ' Minchin Hole.' The diag- 

 nostic characters of this species, as compared with R. ticho- 

 rhinus and R. leptorhinus, throughout their respective skele- 

 tons, have not yet been published. It would be out of place 

 to enter on such details here, in a communication which pro- 

 fesses to be merely a summary of observations made on a 

 series of caverns. But it is especially deserving of remark, 

 that although molars and other bones of R. tichorliinus have 

 been found in very considerable numbers in some of the other 

 Gower caves, such as ' Spritsail-Tor,' ' Paviland,' and ' Cas- 

 well,' not a tooth or other remain referable to that species 

 was identified, either from ' Bacon Hole ' or 'Minchin Hole.' 

 The same negative observation, as I have already stated, 

 applies to Eiephas primigenius. Bones of Bison prisons were 

 common ; but remains of Cervidce very rare. 



Of the Carnivora, the nearly entire skull of a Hysena, 

 Hycena spelcea, with fragments of lower jaws and various 

 bones of the skeleton, was met with; also remains of Canis 

 Lupus and of TJrsus spelceus, but none referable to Felis spelcea. 



1 See antect, p. 351— [Ed.] 



