152 Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



excellence and costliness are no longer inseparably associated 

 in the optician's workshop, they may be induced, by what they 

 see imperfectly, to arm themselves with the means of seeing to 

 more advantage. We shall in future papers indieate to amateurs 

 a wide and interesting field in which their labours will find 

 abundant scope. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



BY W, B. TEGETMEIEE. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.— January 22. 



Discovert of Bone and Flint Arrow-Heads, etc., in Hojna 

 Cave, at Wookey Hole, Somerset. — In a ravine at the village of 

 Wookey- Hole, near Wells, the River Axe flows through a canal cut 

 in the rock. In cutting this passage, a cave, filled with ossiferous 

 loam, was exposed, and its entrance cut away. In 1859, Mr. W. 

 Boyd Dawkins and Mr. Williamson began to explore it by digging 

 away the red earth with which the cave was filled, and continued 

 their operations in 1860 and 1861. They penetrated 34 feet into 

 the cave, which is hollowed out of the Dolomitic Conglomerate, 

 from which have been derived the angular and water-worn stones 

 scattered in the ossiferous cave-earth. Its greatest height is 9 feet, 

 and the width 36 feet. Remains of Hycena spelcea (abundant), 

 Cards Vubpes, G. Lujpus, Tfrsus spelceus, Bguus (abundant), Rhinoceros 

 ticliorhinns. Rh. leptorhinus (?), Bos primigenius, Megaceros Hibernicus, 

 G. Bucklandii, G. Guettardi, G. Taranclus (?), G. Bama (?), and Ele- 

 phas primigenius were met with ; remains of Felis spelcea were found 

 when the cave was first discovered. The following evidences of 

 man were found in the red earth of the cave — chipped flints, flint- 

 splinters, a spear-head of flint, chipped and shaped pieces of chert, 

 and two bone arrow-heads. Mr. Dawkins believes that the condi- 

 tions of the cave and its infilling prove that man was contempora- 

 neous here with the extinct animals whose remains were found, and 

 that the cave was filled with its present contents slowly by the 

 ordinary operations of nature, not by any violent cataclysm. 



Natural Formation op supposed Flint Arrow-He ads. — Imme- 

 diately beneath the surface-soil at Croyde Bay, North Devon, at the 

 mouth of a small transverse valley, Mr. Whitley found broken 

 flints in considerable number. About ten per cent, of the splintered 

 flints at this place have more or less of an arrow-head form, but 

 they pass by insensible gradations from what appear to be perfect 

 arrow-heads of human manufacture to such rough splinters as are 

 evidently the result of natural causes. Hence great caution should 

 be used in judging what flints have been naturally, and what have 

 been artificially shaped. 



