304 W. Pengelly— Cavern Exploration in Devonshire. 
pointed a committee to make a complete, systematic, and 
accurate exploration of the cavern, in which it was known that 
very extensive portions remained entirely intact. This com- 
mittee commenced its labors on March 28, 1865; it has been 
re-appointed, year after year, with sufficient grants of money, up 
to the present time; the work has gone on continuously 
throughout the entire thirteen years; and the result has been, 
not only acomplete confirmation of Mr. MacHnery’s statements, 
but the discovery of far older deposits than he suspected— 
deposits implying great changes of, at least, local geographical 
conditions; changes in the fauna of the district ; and yielding 
evidence of men more ancient and far ruder than even those 
who made the oldest flint tools found in Kent’s Hole prior to 
the appointment of the committee. 
The cavern consists of a series of chambers and passages, 
which resolve themselves into two main divisions, extending 
from nearly north to south in parallel lines, but passing into 
each other near their extremities, and throwing off branches, 
occasionally of considerable size. 
The successive deposits, in descending order, were :— 
1st, or uppermost. Fragments and blocks of limestone from 
an ounce to upwards of 100 tons weight each, which had fallen 
from the roof from time to time, and were, in some instances, 
cemented with carbonate of lime. 
2d. Beneath and between these blocks lay a dark-colored 
and known as the black mould. This occupied the entire eastern 
division, with the exception of a small chamber in its south- 
western end only, but was not found in the other, the remoter, 
entrances to the cavern. Nothing of the kind has occurred 
elsewhere. 
5th. Immediately under the granular stalagmite and the 
black band lay a light red clay, containing usually about fifty 
per cent of small angular fragments of limestone, and somewhat 
numerous blocks of the same rock as large as those lying 0D 
the black mould. In this deposit, known as the cave-earth, 
many of the stones and bones were, at all depths, invested with 
