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Scharpf, Suymour, and Nkwton — Oastlepoak Cave. 35 



most of the halls ami galleries could have been examined by anyone possessing 

 the requisite courage and tenacity. Some of them could not have been visited 

 by man before Mr. Ussher made them accessible by excavation. He 

 penetrated into the cave to the distance from the entrance of about 400 feet, 

 but the portion he explored may only be a small fraction of the whole. By 

 removing the earthfalls and rocks now obstructing many of the passages new 

 galleries may be discovered. It is doubtful whether the cave ever was suitable 

 for human occupation. The early inhabitants of Ireland frequently lived in 

 caves, but they selected such that were dry enough in winter; and they 

 never penetrated very deeply into the recesses of a cave, but lived in close 

 proximity to the entrance, where they still had the advantage of a certain 

 amount of daylight. 



Mr. Ussher noticed that sand was present in all the halls and galleries 

 (except where it has been washed away), and that the great harvest of animal 

 remains occurred whenever it was found to be of a deep red or yellowish- 

 brown colour. Bones were frequently met with on or near the surface of a 

 bed of sand. Where a stalagmite floor had been formed on this bed of sand, 

 and the sand beneath it had been washed away, bones were sometimes seen 

 adhering to the bottom of the stalagmite. In other places the upper sand 

 was rich in bones, the lower barren. 



The following is a short description of the cave, written by Mr. Ussher 

 and sent to me a couple of years before his death : — 



" The Entrance Gallery (Plate VII, 1 to 2) is one of a series of orifices 

 in the base of the crags. Four of them are open caves, which run into the 

 rock from north to south, and each of them exhibits the features of tunnel and 

 shelf. We excavated one of these, the Goat-house, and found a stalagmite 

 floor which had been undermined by the washing away of the bed on which 

 it had stood ; and a loose, pale, barren sand, with cobbles of sandstone in it, 

 had been intruded into the hollow thus formed. 



In the Entrance Gallery we found sandstone cobbles in limestone rubble 

 i in the surface, and beneath them a thick iloor of granular stalagmite about 

 three feet below the shelf, with a Bear's humerus embedded in it beneath, 

 and under this a washed-out hollow into which pale, barren sand had entered. 



In sinking a hole for the door frame, near 2, some bones of Bear and 

 Reindeer turned up; but in the Entrance Hall (2) and Cloak-room Leading 

 east from it was deep, barren sand, only yielding fox-earth bones. This Cloak- 

 room ends in an earthfall probably covering another entrance. We follow a 

 diagonal passage to 3; all these have traces of the shelf, but no stalagmite 

 in situ. 



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