134 PROF. T. m'kenny hughes 



in which the flake was found. The bones and teeth caught in the 

 fissure were only about 6 feet from where the flake lay. 



The overlying drifts and surface-wash were festooned over the 

 broken opening to the cave. The core of the swallow-hole was, 

 of course, the portion that sunk in in the winter of 1886. The 

 looping of the beds decreased as the face of the drift was from time 

 to time cut back ; but it extended for a considerable distance, and 

 the outside portion of the festooned beds (as shown in fig. 5) was 

 seen by General Pitt-Rivers and Dr. John Evans in the first week 

 in September of this year (1887). The margin of it was still to be 

 seen in October, when the photographs exhibited were taken. See 

 especially fig. 1, in which a indicates the shell-bed, cut off, it will 

 be noticed, by the brown clay which slopes down towards the opening 

 to the cave in the direction of the flat stone seen opposite the b. 



When, on digging through the cave from the lower entrance, this 

 broken place in the side of the cave was reached, it appeared as if 

 the bone-earth extended several feet beyond what seemed to be 

 another entraoce to the cave. It was not at first an objection to this 

 view that many cartloads of large angular masses of limestone had 

 to be removed before the bone-earth was touched, as such angular 

 debris, owing to the falling of masses from the roof, often occurs in 

 such caves in and on the bone-earth, and it was to be expected 

 that a larger quantity would be found around the mouth. But when 

 it became clear that the cave went on, and that this mass outside 

 the opening lay in the line of and represented the wall and roof of 

 a portion of the cave that had fallen in, then it was evident that 

 the bone-earth extended no further than the original cave ; and we 

 soon ascertained that the bones were entirely confined to the beds 

 within and under the angular blocks that represented the original 

 outer wall of the cave. 



No marine deposits were found inside of it, and no cave-deposits 

 outside of it. 



The broken limestone over the bone-earth contained a few foreign 

 fragments, but they were only such as would naturally work in 

 from the drift. If the overhanging rock were to fall in now, it 

 would contain some such boulders, one of which is seen plugging the 

 cylindrical hole which descends through the limestone immediately 

 over the opening. (See fig. 2, above the elbow of the man in the 

 centre of the sketch.) 



The drift lay upon this angular debris. A priori it seemed im- 

 probable that the sea could have been there and spared the soft cave- 

 deposits and incoherent debris outside. This, however, was all 

 cleared up by our finding loam standing vertically against the blocks 

 which had fallen in, and showing that the drift, which was 

 there before the breakdown of the roof and waU of the cave, had 

 sunk in upon the crumbling and decomposing limestone. That the 

 effect of this falling-in was not more marked was probably due to 

 the fact that the cave was by that time nearly filled, and the dis- 

 placement therefore was not so great as it would have been had the 

 cave been empty. Still, the drag along the margin showed evidence 



