416 PEOCEE-DINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [JuilC 5, 



air as it would be for a sheet of ice to be formed without resting on 

 water. Prom some cause or other this ancient stalagmite has been in 

 part broken up, and the materials by which it was formerly supported 

 have disappeared. That, however, even prior to its formation animals 

 dwelt in the cave is proved by the bones which are imbedded in the 

 largo fallen masses. Moreover there is reason to believe that cer- 

 tain fragments of bone and splinters of teeth, remarkable for their 

 mineralization, that have been found in the earth now occupying 

 the cavern, were derived from this more ancient deposit ; for they 

 diifer essentially from the remains with which they are now asso- 

 ciated, being heavier and of a more crystalline structure. Some 

 splinters have assumed the fracture of greensand chert. So hard 

 indeed was one of the canines of Bear, that it has been splintered 

 by the hand of man into the form of a flint-flake, and has evidently 

 been used for a cutting-purpose. Its fracture proves that it was 

 minerahzed before it was splintered ; and as it was found in the 

 present cave-earth, it must have been fashioned while the cave was 

 being inhabited by palgeolithic man prior to the accumulation of the 

 earth. For these reasons the evidence in favour of these denser 

 remains having belonged to the deposit which once supported the 

 ancient floor seems to me to be incontrovertible. 



This view opens up an entirely new field for investigation as to 

 the discovery of the Machcerodus ; for it is very likely that this 

 mammal may really belong to the older cave-earth, and not to the 

 more modern, in which the remains of the Mammoth, Woolly Rhi- 

 noceros, and the like occur. But whether this be true or not, it adds 

 a tenfold interest to the exploration of the cave, because there may 

 be still left, in some nook or corner, masses of the older breccia, 

 containing forms of life that had passed away before the arctic 

 mammaha occupied the south of England. 



The presence in the cave at Oreston*, in the same district, of 

 the PUocene Blvinoceros megarhinus (an animal which has never yet 

 been met with in any of the Late Pleistocene caves or river- deposits) 

 strengthens the conclusion that ^some of the caves in the south of 

 England may contain a fauna that was living before the Late Pleis- 

 tocene age. 



Both these caves were probably occupied by the wild beasts for 

 a very considerable length of time; and the remains left behind 

 after each occupation would be extremely likely to be mixed up 

 together, by the passage of water through the chambers, during the 

 oscillations of level which undoubtedly took place during the Pleis- 

 tocene age. Proof of such oscillations in the south of England is 

 afforded by the submerged forest-bed of Bracklesham, in Sussex, 

 which is covered over by a deposit of Boulder-clay and ancient 

 marine shingle. This explanation of their presence seems to me to 

 be more probable than the assumption that they were living during 

 the later Pleistocene period in that area ; for in that case their re- 

 mains would be more commonly met with in the many caves of the 

 south of England, as well as in those of the Late Pleistocene age in 

 * Quart. Jom-n. Geol. Soc. vol. sxvi. p. 457. 



