Vol. 54.] EXPLOEATION OF TY NEWYDD CAYES. 133 



granted to enable them to complete the exploration. Meanwhile 

 he heartily congratulated them on the valuable results already 

 obtained. 



Sir Henut Howorth said that the facts and conclusions of the 

 paper completely supported the view for which some geologists had 

 fought for many years, namely, that the so-called Glacial Drift lies 

 over the beds containing the so-called Pleistocene beasts and Palaeo- 

 lithic man, and not below it. One additional fact in support of this 

 view occurred to him. The contents of the cave pointed very clearly 

 to the waters which conveyed them in having been of a torrential 

 character. This \Yas shown by the size of the stones, by the shifted 

 beds of clay, sand, and gravel with cross-bedding, etc. If the drift 

 with foreign stones, which occupies the bottom of the valley and the 

 hill-tops, occupied the country when the torrential water flowed over 

 it and carried its contents into the cave, it was impossible to believe 

 that some of these foreign stones should not have found their way in 

 too. The complete absence of these foreign stones from the contents 

 of the cave seemed to him to be conclusive that the drift with foreign 

 stones was distributed over North Wales after the cave was filled 

 with its stratified contents. 



Mr. Clement E,eid thought that the Author had conclusively 

 proved that the in-filling of the cave took place before the last 

 glaciation of the district. He was not prepared to accept the cave- 

 deposits as pre-Glacial, as suggested by the President, for the Cae 

 Gwyn fauna is thoroughly Pleistocene. 



Mr. Strahan remarked that the district abounded in underground 

 water-channels communicating with the surface by swallow-holes 

 and other openings. The cave described by the Author seemed to 

 be such a channel, filled with torrential gravel and sand, in which, 

 the fragment of tooth occurred as a pebble. That it was so filled 

 in pre-Glaeial times was proved by the total absence of material 

 foreign to the district. An inter-Glacial episode would not explain 

 the circumstances ; the contents of the cave must have been formed 

 before any of the drift with erratics, which is now so abundant, 

 reached the neighbourhood. He complimented the Author on the 

 extreme care with which the investigation was being conducted. 



Mr. Mark pointed out that the deposit of materials yielding 

 a definite fauna in caverns before the last glaciation of North Wales 

 and the North of England seemed now to be satisfactorily established : 

 as the result of the work by Mr. Tiddeman in Victoria Cave, Settle ; 

 by the President in the caverns adjoining those described in this 

 paper ; and now by the Author of the paper just read. The 

 evidence was cumulative ; but he (the speaker) believed that, had 

 the question of the age of man been left out of account, the evidence 

 long ago brought forward by Mr. Tiddeman would have been 

 generally accepted. 



Mr. A. E. Salter was interested to find that the lower and older 

 gravels of the fissure consisted of local material only, and that above 

 them a drift occurred containing far-travelled erratics, because he 

 found the same occurrence in the South of England. In the Thames 

 Yalley, for instance, the oldest gravels, as at Shooter's Hill, are 



