ScHAitFF, Seymour, ano Nkwto.v — Castlepook Olive. 49 



there is an obvious hiatus, which no doubt represents a time-interval com- 

 mencing with the sealing-up of the cave orifices on the initiation of the 

 Glacial Period and ending when denudation and quarrying operations exposed 

 them again to view from beneath the mantle of lower boulder-clay. 



The only argument for a post-glacial age for the cave lies in the fact that 

 the drainage levels of the latter and the level of the present drainage system 

 of the district are not more than about 20 feet apart vertically, possibly even 

 less. If the cave is of pre-glacial age, as seems most probable to the writer, 

 this implies an exceptionally slow rate of denudation locally during the 

 time which has elapsed since the end of the Glacial Period. This, however, 

 may be accounted for on the hypothesis that the present drainage system 

 was established at a period long after the disappearance of the ice sheet, and 

 may possibly have been preceded by a system of drainage in some other 

 direction. River diversion of a temporary or even permanent nature has 

 been a common result of the change of local topography by accumulations of 

 boulder-clay following the Ice Age. The palaeontological evidence, however, 

 in addition to the geological, seems to the writer to point to the cave having 

 been formed before the Glacial Period. The °:eolo2;ical evidence is therefore 

 not conclusive one way or another, though inclining, on the apparent absence 

 of any erratic in the cave deposits, to the view that the cave is of pre- 

 glacial age. 



3.— ANIMAL REMAINS (except Birds). 



Natterer's Bat (Myotis nattereri). 



Only two long bones of bats were found in the cave, one of which belonged 

 to this species, the other to the next. Both looked modern and are probably 

 fairly recent. According to the late Major Barrett-Hamilton, 1 this species 

 still lives in Co. Cork. • 



Small Horse-shoe Bat (Ehinolojohus Mpposideros). 



This bat was found inhabiting the caves of Co. Clare, and its bones were 

 there met with in the upper and the lower stratum. In Castlepook Cave no 

 recent specimens were observed, only a single long bone which was among 

 the remains of Reindeer, Irish Elk, and Hyrena. 



1 Barrett-Hamilton, G. E. H. : "British Mammals," pt. iv, p. 180. London. 



R.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXXIV, SECT. B. [G] 



