﻿Vol. 6 1.] OSSIFEROUS CAVERN AT LONGCLIFEE. 61 



YI. Conclusion. 



There is no doubt that the cavern was eroded along a master- 

 joint in the limestone by the action of water. This erosion must 

 have taken place long before denudation had produced the present 

 shape of the surface of the ground. There is little doubt that the 

 majority of the bones were introduced through the swallow-hole ; 

 others may have fallen or beeu washed in at various places along 

 the joint or roof of the cavern where it communicated with the 

 surface of the ground. 



In considering the origin and age of the bones, we may briefly 

 examine the various alternatives : — 



1. The cavern may have been a hyaena-den. The presence of a 

 small number of gnawed bones and over forty l^-sena-coprorites tend 

 to support this view. As far as we could tell from the extent of 

 our excavations, the only entrance to the cavern was by the 

 swallow-hole, a more or less vertical shaft 7 J feet wide, the top of 

 which was at least 12 feet above the top of the bone-deposits 

 found in it. It is quite possible that the cave was accessible 

 from the swallow-hole during the time when the bone-deposits 

 were forming, and was used by hyaenas until nearly filled up. 



2. The mammalian remains may be merely those of animals that 

 had fallen into the swallow-hole, but the isolated positions and 

 fragmentary condition of the bones scarcely admit of this interpre- 

 tation of the origin of the whole of the remains. 



3. The deposits might have been formed at a date subsequent to 

 Pleistocene times. That is to say, they might have been washed in 

 from a hyaena-den or other Pleistocene deposit, and mingled with 

 later ones. In this way the occurrence of the fallow-deer with the 

 Pleistocene species would be accounted for. The abundant remains 

 of what we take to be fallow-deer in nearly all parts of the bone- 

 deposits necessitate a very careful consideration of the possibilities 

 of these deposits being of recent origin. But the supposition that 

 they are of recent origin would imply that the surface of land in 

 the neighbourhood must have been sufficiently elevated above the 

 swallow-hole to collect water to wash the remains into the cavern : 

 and that this land has been denuded, not indeed since Pleistocene 

 times, but since the redeposition of the bones in Eoman or post- 

 Roman times, if the fallow-deer was really first introduced into 

 this country by the Romans. Such rapid denudation does not seem 

 possible, and we do not think the supposition tenable. 



We conclude, therefore, that the Hoe-Grange bone-deposits were 

 of Pleistocene age ; that some of the bones fell or were washed in 

 through the swallow-hole and roof of the cavern ; and that others 

 were introduced by hyaenas which used the cavern as their den. 



The presence of the small deer-remains with bones of undoubted 

 Pleistocene mammalia, under the circumstances described by us, 

 proves, we think, that the fallow-deer, or a form which we cannot 

 distinguish from it, existed in Pleistocene times in Britain. 



