174 Proceeding J the Royal Ivkh Academy. 



A remarkable fact is tlie great number of infantile and immature 

 human bones, some of tbe former being so young as to be nearly foetal. 

 Those of the pig are slightly blackened, as if by fire. Eew of the 

 bones show traces of having been gnawed by wild animals, although 

 on some are marks that may have been produced in that way. Xor 

 are they split, as if for the extraction of marrow, but that might have 

 been accomplished by simply cracking them across. It is now hard to 

 say Avhether they were broken as they are found, by accident or design. 



I may be permitted to point out the im]Dortance of this find, for 

 more than one reason. Pii'st, if we examine the literature of the Cave, 

 as briefly summarised in Dr. Foot's paper, ^ we shall find that all the 

 descrij)tions of the locality, where, fi-om the remotest times, bones 

 were known to occur, refer entu'ely to the Eabbit Buri'ow. A glance 

 at the extracts given by him will prove that at once. But the last 

 expedition before Dr. Foot's was undertaken by the Rev. Mr. Graves, 

 Mr. Prim, and Mr. "William Eobertson, to clear up doubts expressed by 

 a relative of the latter in notes of a visit in 1819, as to the existence 

 at all,, in the Cave, of bones, and of a well of water. These gentlemen 

 concluded that he had only visited the "Market Cross" chamber, 

 where (they considered) no bones were to be found, and came to the 

 conclusion, that human and other hones are confined not only to one 

 chamler, hut to a part of that chamber, and in the immediate vicinity of 

 the well.] And it is clear that all the observers considered the bones 

 to have remained where they were originally deposited, without any 

 reference to subsequent geological agencies. 



Besides this, the discovery of these bones adds another link in the 

 chain of evidence against the idea that all the bones in this cavern are 

 those of persons who used it as a place of refuge from the Danes, and 

 were slain there in the t^nth century. Along with the improbability 

 of people in a hunied flight taking in parts of animals to serve as food, 

 and of theii' eating it in such iracomf ortable and out of the way positions, 

 it must be remembered that all the bones occur under the same condi- 

 tions, in stratified deposits, under clay and silt, which must in part 

 have come in later, and that by means of a considerable stream ; nor 

 could they have been introduced from other parts of the now known 

 interior of the Cave, as the stratification runs the wrong way for 

 this, and in a direction tending towards the present openings of the 

 Cave. 



My theory is, that these silt-beds covered with stalagmite, fill up 

 the entrances to other chambers of the Cave at a higher level ; that the 

 bones formerly belonged to these chambers, and have been brought out 



* Op. cit., pp. 67-72. 



t Kilkenny Ai-chceological Societj^ Proceedings, Ap. 28, 1854. See Natural Historj' 

 Review, Vol. I., p. 175. The italics are in the original. Mr. Eobertson refers to 

 the " large fracture wantonly made in one of the stalactitic flutings of this hold 

 pUlar ('the Market Cross')." But this appearance is simply caused by the tsvo 

 portions of the piUar not having yet joined. 



