PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY 



PAPERS READ BEFORE THE ACADEMY 



I. 



01^ THE DISCOVERY OF HY^NA, MAMMOTH, AND 

 OTHER EXTmCT MAMMALS m A CARBOMFEROrS 

 CAVERN m COUNTY CORK. 



By R. J. USSHER. 



[Read November 14. Ordered for Publication November 16. 

 Published November 30, 1904.] 



The instances in Ireland in which caves have been found to contain 

 extinct mammalia have been few, and until the last four years far 

 between. Our most important bone-cave has hitherto been that of 

 Shandon in County Waterford, which, in 1859 and subsequent years, 

 was discovered to contain Bear, Wolf, Mammoth, Horse, Reindeer, 

 and Red Deer in a breccia beneath stalagmite.^ 



This led me, at the suggestion of Prof. Leith Adams, to make 

 searches in a neighbouring district, which resulted in the discovery in 

 1879 of a small bone-cave at Ballynamintra, with a series of strata 

 of very different ages, from the deeply-buried stalagmite floor 

 and its debris (which yielded Bear, Reindeer, and Irish Elk) to the 

 Neolithic surface-stratum, full of kitchen-midden relics. The special 

 interest of this cave consisted in its comprising, within a small area 



1 Proc. R. Dublin Soc, 22nd June, 1859. Natural History Review, October, 

 1859. Trans. R. I. Acad., vol. xxvi. (June, 1876). 



U. I. A, PROC, VOL. XXV., SEC. K.j A 



