462 University of California Publications in Geology [Vol. 10 



INTRODUCTION 



The limestone caves of California have been the object of much 

 fruitful investigation on the part of students of anthropology and 

 palaeontology concerned especially with the search for evidence bear- 

 ing on the problem of early man in America Although up to the 

 present time no indisputable evidences of Pleistocene man have been 

 found in these caves, there remain for consideration in the anthro- 

 pological sense many important problems relating to the origin, 

 evolution, migrations and habits of the mammals which constituted 

 a part of the environment in which Pleistocene man must have moved 

 if present in this region. 



In purely palaeontologic studies the cave faunas are of unusual 

 importance, representing as they do an aspect or a zone of mammalian 

 life not preserved in the more common lacustrine, fluviatile and 

 alluvial accumulations. The recognition of contemporaneity of dis- 

 tinct aspects of faunas, each occupying its own particular type of 

 environment in an extensive geographic province, is of great value in 

 such studies. Thus the importance of mammals from deposits such 

 as Potter Creek and Samwel Caves in Shasta County, inhabiting, as 

 they apparently did, a region physiographically distinct from the 

 adjacent Great Valley of California, can hardly be overestimated. 



The present study of the mammalian fauna from Hawver Cave is 

 in a manner supplementary to the exhaustive investigation of Potter 

 Creek Cave by W. J. Sinclair and the researches of E. L. Furlong 

 on Samwel Cave. Although the material from Hawver Cave is frag- 

 mentary and not so abundant as that from the Shasta deposits, it is 

 unique in the possession of certain forms heretofore unrecorded from 

 Pleistocene caverns of the state. 



It is great pleasure to acknowledge indebtedness to those connected 

 with the furtherance of this work. The present research owes its 

 origin to the late Dr. J. C. Hawver of Auburn, California, who first 

 brought the cave and its significant fossil contents to the attention 

 of the University of California. Dr. Hawver followed the scientific 

 work with a sympathetic interest and his assiduous prosecution of 

 collecting work made possible the assembling of a good representation 

 of the Pleistocene vertebrates from the cave. This collection was 

 very kindly presented by Dr. Hawver to the Department of Palaeon- 

 tology, University of California, and forms the basis of the following 

 study. 



