476 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



and while the water percolated through the cave, the animal bones 

 were caught in the rock dehris. This I have evidence to prove beyond 

 doubt, although these caves at the present time stand high above the 

 level of any current of water in the locality. 



Knockninny cave was quite different ; it was horizontal, and (as I 

 have said before) only a fragment of a cave which passed through a 

 bulge in the face of the escarpment from east to west, a distance of 

 only 51 feet, and open at both ends: and after the water which origin- 

 ally ran through it found a lower level it became dry, and no doubt 

 was sought as a place of shelter and refuge by nomadic tribes. 



Through the whole strata of the cave the remains were found 

 apart ; even portions of the same skull were found in different parts of 

 the cave, but always in the same stratum. These facts would support 

 the theory that cannibals occupied the cave from time to time, or dur- 

 ing the course of ages solitary individuals, who sought it as a shelter 

 and occasionally died there. Their bodies becoming decomposed, their 

 bones became scattered over the surface of the floor by animals which 

 it is quite evident inhabited it ; and each successive floor of the cave, as 

 it was slowly formed, furnished its own quota of animal and human 

 remains. The presence of charcoal in each layer of cave earth would 

 corroborate the hypothesis that it has at various intervals been used 

 as a habitation. 



I might observe, before I pass on to explain the nature of the lower 

 stratum of the cave, that there is hardly any branch of the human 

 race but who at one period of their history were cave-dwellers, from 

 the savages found in various parts of the world at the present time 

 back through a long past, even before that ancient institution was 

 established, the Chinese Empire. " The Chinese," says Tylor(" Pri- 

 mitive Culture "), " can show with all due gravity the records of their 

 ancient dynasties, and tell us how in old times their ancestors dwelt 

 in caves, and ate raw flesh till, under such and such rulers, they were 

 taught to build huts and prepare skins for garments." 



Then if we turn to the Homeric Cyclops : — 



" Housed in the liills they neither buy nor sell, 

 No kindly offices demand or show, 

 Each in the hollow cave where he doth dwell 



Gives law to wife and children as he thinketh well." 



In a late volume by H. H. Bancroft on " The "Wild Tribes of the 

 Pacific States of North America," we read that a great many of these 

 tribes are cave-dwellers, and " love the inhospitable mountain and 

 their miserable burrowing-placcs better than all the comforts of civi- 

 lization." 



I need not go into prehistoric times, as the caves found in all 

 countries bear witness to the same fact. I will now wind up this 

 paper with some observations on the lower stratum of the cave, in. 

 connexion with the denudation of the surrounding country. 



