244 R. PENNINGTON ON THE CASTLETON BONE-CAVES. 



bones very rotten and difficult to get out entire. Lower down, the 

 bones were much better-preserved. Lowest of all, near to the 

 encircling rocks, the bones were incrusted with stalagmite, and 

 sometimes welded together into a mass by it. This was particularly 

 the case in the fissure and near the walls of the basin ; further from 

 the rock no such bones appeared. 



This stalagmite confirms my opinion that the place was filled from 

 the subaerial disintegration of the limestone alone, as it could 

 only have arisen from water dripping from the rocks above and 

 charged with carbonate of lime. The limestone rises just to the 

 south ; and thus water would flow down from it towards the " swal- 

 lows" near the fissure. Near to the subjacent rock was yellowish 

 earth (E, fig. 2), similar to that lying next to the rock all over the 

 Mountain- Limestone district. 



The period necessary for the filling-up of the basin and fissure 

 with the debris and the included bones must have been of consider- 

 able duration. It is, of course, clear that the bones incrusted with 

 or enclosed in stalagmite must have lain exposed for a considerable 

 time ; and the loam itself had no appearance of being washed or 

 drifted into the fissure except very gradually, and then being rather 

 the result of the disintegration of the rocks immediately around than 

 from the washings of any rocks further away. All the included 

 rocks were limestone and angular, and bore no signs of rolling; 

 they must have fallen from time to time from the rock round the 

 basin. Some were of large size. Certainly, if any of the fragments 

 had been washed in, they and the loam including them must have 

 come from the slopes to the south of the place, as there is nothing 

 but the Yoredale series to the north. 



At the same time floods may have from time to time occurred, and 

 conveyed bones and debris into the basin. 



The likeliest supposition appears to me to be that this was a 

 swampy place, into which animals from time to time fell, or near 

 which they died, and into which in rainy seasons their bones were 

 washed from the neighbouring slopes. 



As to the condition of the bones, some were found in the proper 

 relative position ; but most were disjointed and had evidently been 

 disturbed since death; many were fractured, some probably by the 

 falling of pieces of rock; others were so decayed as to be very frag- 

 mentary ; and many it was impossible to extract whole. 



Notwithstanding the fractures, there was no trace (except as will 

 be specially mentioned by Mr. Dawkins) of the gnawing of hyaenas 

 or the agency of man. 



Waterhouses Fissure. 



There is in Staffordshire, near the road from Leek to Ashbourne, 

 at a little village called Waterhouses, a quarry in the Mountain 

 Limestone famous for a discovery of mammoth-remains which took 

 place in 1864. The little river Hamps flows close to the quarry, 

 but, just before reaching it, disappears underground, leaving its 

 ancient bed dry save in very rainy seasons, just as the Manifold 



