Evidence of the Caves. 37 



below the cave level. Therefore this red grit must have here 

 drifted into the cave before this deep valley had been gradually 

 scooped out by rains and streams. The Breccia contained 

 numbers of bones, but they were all of the great cave bear, 

 except two jaws of lion and another of fox, and none of these 

 bones had been gnawed by hyaenas, like those in the cave earth 

 above. Even here, however, human implements of flint were 

 found, not so finely wrought as those in the cave earth above, 

 but unmistakably the work of men. No one can assign a date 

 to these things, but, ancient as must have been the men of the 

 cave earth who lived when mammoths and their companions 

 existed, the people who made the weapons found in the Breccia 

 were vastly older. We can only say that they represented a 

 very far-off age, as when one sees the snowy peaks of lofty 

 mountains rising against a clear sky he is sure they are further 

 than any other visible object, but cannot say how great their 

 distance is. 



In 1858 quarrymen working on the site of an ancient cave at 

 Shandon, near Dungarvan, in County Waterford, found the 

 remains of a mammoth with those of reindeer. They were 

 brought to light by the late Mr. E. Brenan, of Dungarvan, and 

 are now in the Science and Art Museum, Dublin. Bones of 

 horse, bear, and other animals were also found in Shandon 

 Cave by Professor Leith Adams, who had done cave exploration 

 work in Malta. 



In company with him in 1879 I opened up a small cave half- 

 a-mile south of the Cappagh Station, in the townland of Bally - 

 namintra. It was nearly filled with deposits ; but, now that it 

 is cleared, it forms a tunnel about eight feet wide. When we 

 began to dig we found in the brown earth which lay uppermost 

 many bones of domestic animals — as cows, sheep, pigs and dogs 

 — with some human bones ; but as we dug deeper we came to 

 a grey earth that contained more ancient-looking blackened 

 bones of a larger size. These were fragmentary, but when we 

 came upon pieces of palmated antlers my friend pronounced 

 them without doubt to belong to the Irish elk. Its remains, 



