J. MAGENS MELLO ON THE BONE-CAVES OF CRESWELL CRAGS. 581 



iron socket in its under side ; this may have been the boss of a 

 sword or dagger. In other parts of the cavern nothing of any 

 importance was discovered in the surface-soil ; here and there we 

 met with broken fragments of Roman and later pottery ; andj we 

 have heard that a coin of Faustina has since been picked up outside ; 

 but we were disappointed in finding so few traces of Roman or 

 Romano-British occupation. 



3. The Breccia. — A great quantity of breccia (2) remained on the 

 left-hand side of Chamber A, blocking up the entrance to Robin 

 Hood's Parlour (C) ; this had to be removed by frequent blasting, 

 before the cave-earth below could be reached. The breccia, which 

 near the entrance of the cave had proved very rich in its fossil 

 contents, yielding numerous bones and flint implements, contained 

 very little further in, owing probabfy to its having accumulated in 

 close proximity to the roof, to which at several points it was united 

 by thick masses of stalactite and stalagmite. Above the breccia in 

 this part of the cave the stalagmite was as much as 2 feet thick 



(%. 2). 



Amongst the stalagmitic breccia, some very beautiful crystalliza- 

 tions of calcite occurred, with most delicate acicular and botryoidal 

 forms. Towards the back of Chamber C the breccia thinned out, as 

 well as towards the right-hand side of the cave, where it was absent, 

 except at the mouth of the small side fissure (Chamber G). The 

 few remains found in the breccia consisted, as before, of bones of 

 the Hare, a few teeth of the larger Pleistocene Mammalia (R. ticho- 

 rhinus, Hyaena, Bear, and Horse), together with fragmentary flint 

 implements and a small piece of ruddle. 



4. The Cave-Earth. — The succeeding deposit, that of cave-earth 

 (3), was very uniformly distributed throughout the cavern, although 

 varying very considerably in thickness in different parts. Near to 

 the entrance, as has been observed in a previous paper, it was very 

 thin where the breccia attained its greatest development ; but in 

 the inner parts of the cave it increased considerably in amount, 

 being as much as 4 feet 6 inches thick at the extremity of 

 Chamber F (fig. 5). 



Under the breccia between the square doorway and the mouth of 

 the cave, the bed of waterworn pebbles mentioned in the second 

 paper on these caves became a thickish red conglomerate, the pebbles 

 being firmly cemented together by iron and lime. The deposit was 

 of very limited extent, but apparently denoted the presence of a 

 stream of water running across this part of the cavern during a 

 short period. As there was no trace of a continuance of the pebble- 

 bed towards the entrance of the cave, it was perhaps thrown down 

 in a hollow of the floor during some flooding. 



From the cave-earth the most important remains, both of the 

 Pleistocene Mammalia and of Man, have been obtained ; in it bones 

 and teeth in great abundance of all the species that have already 

 been catalogued as occurring in this cavern continued to be found in 

 all the chambers. Horse's teeth were particularly numerous. In 

 Chamber G several large bones (Mammoth) were found lying 



