Dwelling Places of Prehistoric Man 43 



long, the left passage 31 feet. The slabs covering the passages 

 above the fork had nearly all been removed and the cave filled in 

 with soil. Owing to the very steep incline in the floor a great deal 

 of soil had fallen down into the lower chambers, which until a few 

 years ago were nearly blocked up. Rabbits had been instrumental 

 in doing much of the filling in, and rabbit bones were freely found 

 in the loose soil. In clearing out this cave we began by removing 

 from one to over two feet from the floor of chamber 2. In the 

 confined space in which we had to work this was very difificult. 

 We pushed most of the soil down into chamber No. t, from which 

 it had to be carried out in buckets. We then sank a shaft from 

 above in the short passage above the fork, and pulled up the filling 

 up soil in buckets. We thus got the whole of the lower half of the 

 souterrain completely cleared out, and proceeded to the upper 

 passage which, the roof being all gone, we cleared from above. 



In the loose soil in chamber 2 were found odd fragments of 

 light unsooted pottery, a stone axe, and a spindle whorl. The 

 pottery fragments were too few and imperfect to attempt to piece 

 together, but are evidently remains of a small circular vessel, thin 

 and free from soot. All the loose soil in this chamber, and 

 evidently the above remains with it had been scraped down from 

 the upper chambers by rabbits or by the action of water, as 

 chambers i and 2 are in themselves completely rock cut, and 

 therefore impervious to soil falling in from the roof. 



At the extreme end of the upper western passage we found 

 remains of a fire sitting on the bed rock of the floor, and in the fire 

 remains, the numerous fragments of one large cooking pot, heavily 

 sooted on the outside and clean on the inside. On piecing these 

 fragments together we found an almost couiplete pot to be there. 



It has been carefully reconstructed with the result shown 

 Plate V, No. I ; the plaster of paris used to fill up the gaps 

 where some pieces were missing has been made of a different colour 

 from the rest of the pot, so that it need not be confused with the 

 original. In washing the clay off the fragments most of the greasy 

 soot came off. It was very thick for four inches from the top all 

 round, while the four inches from the bottom were free from soot. 



