xii INTRODUCTION. 



« 



habited by man for some considerable time, like those of Perigord.^ The interment is 

 clearly of a later date than the occupation, because it is made in the mass of earth, bones, 

 and charcoal, which resulted from the latter. The interval between the two is of doubtful 

 length. 



§ 2, F. In the same year we explored the cave, Plumley's Den, like the preceding in 

 Burrington Combe. It consists of two large chambers, connected together by two small 

 passages, not more than a few inches high. The natural entrance, but a little larger than 

 a fox-hole, was in the roof of the first chamber, and through this we had to drop down 

 into the cave. Subsequently we blasted a second entrance. The first chamber was at 

 least half-full of broken rocks, forming a talus immediately below the natural entrance, 

 through which in part they may have been introduced. They were covered with a mortar- 

 like mass of decomposing stalagmite. Underneath them we found a group of four skulls, 

 more or less crushed and fractured. One of these belonged to a small variety of the Bos 

 taurus, probably that variety so abundant in deposits of Prehistoric age. Bos longifrons. 

 Two others belonged to a species of the goat tribe, and approach more closely to the 

 jEgoceros Caucasica^ of Asia than any recent species with which we are acquainted, the 

 horncores being oval, in section, very nearly parallel, and slightly recurved. We have met 

 with a similar form in a deposit of bones at Richmond, in Yorkshire ; but in the absence 

 of the necessary materials for comparison from the Museums of London, Oxford, and 

 Paris, we do not feel justified in imposing a new specific name. The fourth skull belonged 

 to Sus scrofa, and had a round hole in the frontals, about the size of a crown -piece, which 

 had the appearance of being made by human hands. The presence of the lower jaws by 

 the side of their respective skulls indicates that they were deposited in the cave while 

 the ligaments still bound them together. They were all more or less covered with decay- 

 ing stalagmite. Between the interstices of the stones covering the floor were numerous 

 bones and teeth of wolf, fox, mole, arvicolae, badger, bat, the metacar}3al of red deer, the 

 radius of Bos, and the remains of birds. The outer chamber was remarkable for the 

 absence of earth of any kind, except underneath the natural entrance, where there was a 

 thin coating. The lower chamber, on the other hand, running in the same slope as the 

 outer, has its lower end entirely stopped up with a fine red earth, deposited by a stream, 

 traces of the flow of which, during heavy rains, were evid(;nt. How the animal remains 

 were introduced — for there were no marks of gnawing upon them, and no fragments of 

 charcoal in the cave — is altogether a matter of conjecture. But the fact of finding the 

 skuUs grouped together, coupled with the presence of the hole in the frontals of the Sus 

 scrofa, inclines us to believe that they may have been introduced by the hand of man. The 

 entrance was far too small to admit of an ox falling into the cave by accident, and scarcely 

 large enough to admit of a goat or deer squeezing themselves through. 



^ ' Revue Archeologique,' 1864. 



2 Gray, ' Cat. of Bones of Mammals in British Museum,' 8vo, 1862, p. 249. 



