308 W. Pengelly—Cavern Exploration in Devonshire. 
between the town of Brixham and Berry Head, and about half 
a mile from each, there is a cavern known as the Ash-Hole. It 
was partially explored, probably about, or soon after, the time 
acEnery was engaged in Kent’s Hole, by the late Rev. 
H. F. Lyte, who, unfortunately, does not appear to have left 
any account of the results. The earliest mention of this cavern 
ave been able to find is a very brief one in Bellamy’s 
‘Natural History of South Devon,” published in 1839 (p. 14). 
During the Plymouth Meeting in 1841, Mr. George Bartlett, a 
native of Brixham, who assisted Mr. Lyte, described to this 
Section the objects of interest the Ash-Hole had yielded (see 
Report Brit. Assoc. 1851, Trans. Sections, p. 61). So far as 
was then known the cave was thirty yards long and six yards 
broad. Below a recent accumulation, four feet deep, of loam 
and earth, with land and marine shells, bones of the domestic 
fowl and of man, pottery, and various implements, lay a true 
cave-earth, abounding in the remains of elephant. Prof. Owen. 
who identified, from this lower bed, relics of badger, polecat, 
stoat, water-vole, rabbit and reindeer, remarks, that for the 
first good evidence of the reindeer in this island he had been 
indebted to Mr. Bartlett, who stated that the remains were 
found in this cavern (see “ Brit. Foss. Mam.” 1846, pp. 109-110, 
113-114, 116, 204, 212, 479-480). I have made numerous 
visits to the spot, which, when Mr. Lyte began his diggings, 
must have been a shaft-like fissure, accessible from the top only. 
A lateral opening, however, has been quarried into it: there 1s 
a narrow tunnel extending westward, in which the deposit is 
covered with a thick sheet of stalagmite, and where one 1s 
tempted to believe that a few weeks’ labor might be well 
invested, 
(To be continued.) 
