334 



THE GEOLOGIST, 



an account from Mr. Starling Benson's excellent paper in the Transactions of 

 the Institution. The floor of the cave Avill be seen to fall from the entrance 

 towards the inner part, while the interior of the roof is pointed (the two sides 

 meeting at an angle), and is covered by a layer of stalactite, and the floor is 

 also overlaid with stalagmite, which was blasted through, and a cross trench 

 opened down to the solid limestone. Pirst, then, they arrived at a bed of 

 alluvial earth, in which were recent shells (still to be found there) and bones of 

 ox, red-deer, roe-buck, and fox, succeeded by a thickish layer of stalagmite. 

 Then came a bed of hard breccia, with bear-, ox-, and deer-bones ; then more 

 stalagmite, below which was more breccia, and a deposit of cave-earth, — the 

 grand treasure-house of osseous remains. Then came bones of the gigantic 

 mammoth, rhinoceros, hysena, wolf, bear, ox, and deer. The lower layer of the 

 black sand seemed to be almost exclusively occupied by mammoth-bones, the only 

 others being a tooth of badger, and one of a kind of pole-cat. The mammoth- 

 remains are most wonderful, and almost worth a special journey to Swansea to 

 see them. The tusk was two feet round, and five feet five inches long ; besides 

 which, there were humeri, femora, tibia, ulna, radius, and several phalanges. 

 Below this important bed was more stalagmite, with shelly sand, containing 

 Clausilia nigricans, Littorina littoralis ; also bones of birds and of arvicola. Here 

 was a grand storehouse of fossil remains, and a large field for speculation as to 

 the conditions under which all these inhabitants lived. How the shells got 

 there at the bottom of all these layers, and at a height of thirty feet above the 

 sea, is easily explained. When they lived, the coast had not been elevated ; 

 consequently, the mouth of the cave was probably under water at high tide, 

 allowing the shells to be deposited, and birds and water-rats to enter at 

 low tide. 



With regard to the CImisilia, however, which is a land shell, it was probably 

 not deposited until the floor of the caves began to be dry, and above water. 

 This elevation, which is to be found in all the caves of Gower, is quite borne 

 out by the water-worn appearance of the rocks in Caswell Bay. When the 

 floor of the cave was dry, the mammoth took possession, and lived in it. It is 

 not very likely that his bones were drifted in by the sea, for two reasons : \st, 

 that they were in a state of good preservation, which would not have been the 

 case if they had been well beaten about by the waves ; and, Inclly, they all 

 appeared to belong to the same individual, as if he had lived and died there. 

 Then came animals of smaller kinds in greater profusion, succeeded at the top 

 by red deer, &c., animals which have not been for such a great length of time 

 extinct. There are no traces of man below the upper stalagmite ; but in the 

 black mud above are pieces of English pottery — a fact of which I was unaware 

 in one of my visits, but which I sincerely regretted afterwards ; for, seeing a 

 rapacious cormorant fishing just below me, I flung at it a piece of pottery, 

 which I took to be of more modern extraction ; on examining the bones at the 

 Museum, I recognized the antiquarian remains that I had so ignorantly cast 

 away. There is another cave in Gower, which we shaU presently visit, in 

 which human traces have been found* — to the best of my knowledge the only 

 two in Great Britain in which such has occurred. A little to the west is the 

 Mitchin Hole, a larger hole than the other, but possessing no remains ; so we 

 will wander along the cliffs until we come to Peimard Castle. Pennard Castle 

 is rather a mystery as to where it came from, and where all the rest of the 

 place is gone to. It was very likely built at the same tnne as most of the 

 other castles ; but tradition has been unusaUy busy, and has asserted that it 

 was built in one night, and destroyed in the same space of time by sand blown 

 over from Ireland." 



* Traces and relics of man are reported in other instances in Britain. — Bd. Geol. 



