EXPLORATION OF THE CAVES OF BORNEO. 277 



to the order Eoclentia. This talus is composed, in great measure, 

 of large angular and subangular blocks of limestone. In cave No. 

 V. its summit is nearly 50 feet above the floor of the cave. 



(3.) A stratum of river mud mingled with bat-guano, and 

 with rounded masses of limestone and creamy crystalline stalagmite 

 interspersed. The maximum thickness observed in the excavations 

 was 3 feet. This stratum is crowded with the remains of bats, and 

 also with those of larger mammals — all (as I am led to understand) 

 of genera now extant in Borneo. The bones are almost invariably 

 in a very broken condition, and so rounded and water-worn as to 

 be past identification. As a sample of these bones has been ex- 

 amined in England, it is not necessary to speak more particularly 

 of them here. In addition to the mammalian remains, the mud 

 exhibits a miscellaneous assemblage of the remains of small rep- 

 tiles (chiefly Chelonian), fish bones and scales, chelae of crusta- 

 ceans, land and fresh-water shells, leaves, &c, &c. In the upper 

 level of this river mud traces of the presence of man are abundant. 



(4.) The yellow clay, more or less concreted into hard 

 pseudostnlagmite, and containing casts of land shells, and bones 

 and teeth of pig In jS"o. XIII. a narrow band of nearly pure 

 stalagmite (about I inches thick) intervenes between the river mud 

 and the yellow clay. The latter deposit rests immediately on the 

 limestone floor of the cave. It contains a few water- worn pebbles 

 and fine gravel, and it has been extensively denuded, prior to the 

 introduction of the river mud above it. 



The foregoing series of deposits is found, with wonderful!}- 

 slight variation, at points so distant from each other as Jambusan 

 and ]N y iah. At both places the floors of the caves which present it 

 are at a level of some 40 feet above the flat land at the bases of the 

 hills. All four caves open on the face of a perpendicular cliff, so 

 that their height above the present valleys affords a gauge of the 

 denudation of the soft rocks in the vicinity of these hills since the 

 introduction of the river mud. 



The above are the principal kinds of deposits that are met 

 with. Apart from the evidence as to their slight antiquity afforded 

 by the mammalian remains, and by the fact of the presence of man 

 in a fairly advanced stage of civilisation in the particular instances 

 examined, it seems highly probable that the contents of all the 



