NOTES AND QTJEEIES. 



117 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Human Remains near KNARESBnuouGH. — Dear Siu, — The accompanying 

 note may interest some of your readers, and will, I hope, receive elucidation 

 from some of your correspondents. — Yours truly. Homo Eossilis," 



Near Knaresborougb, in a cavity of the limestone strata, twenty-seven feet 

 below the surface, remains of six human skeletons were discovered imbedded in 

 fine alluvial clay, which was covered with large water- worn boulders. This 

 cave, or fissure, is described as a natural cavity in the limestone rock, seven 

 feet wide, five feet high, and of considerable length ; it communicated with the 

 surface by an irregular perpendicular fissure, wide enough to allow a full-grown 

 man to pass. A small spring of water trickles down the side of this opening, 

 and is lost in the porous limestone below. The skull of a dog, and jaw-bone 

 of an ox were found with the human bones ; no vestiges of works of art were 

 observed. The provincial paper ("Harrowgate Herald," October, 1852), from 

 which this account is taken, suggests that these remains are of persons who 

 sought for refuge in this cave from their enemies, and being discovered by the 

 latter were stoned to death! An ingenious idea, certainly. One of the 

 skeletons is said to be of a young adult woman. 



Slickensides. — Noticing, after the late thaws, in riding by railway to town, 

 as I have often done before, that the numerous slips of earth in the embank- 

 ments and cuttings presented at their planes of separation and slide smooth 

 and polished surfaces very like, if not indeed identical with, ordinary " slicken- 

 sides," I have thought a mere note of these common occurrences might con- 

 vey to many others that which they have seemed to suggest to. myself, that 

 slickensides on the large scale might often be due to no other more complex 

 cause than the effects of wet and the natural sliding action of mere subsidence. 

 — Ed. Geol. 



Suggestion respecting Provincial Museums. — Among the valuable con- 

 tributions to science published by the Government Ordnance Survey, one is an 

 Essay on the Educational Uses of Museums, from the pen of the late dis- 

 tinguished Edinburgh University Professor, Edward Eorbes. In this essay I 

 find the following passage. 



" When the inquirer goes from one province to another, from one county to 

 another, he seeks first for local collections. In almost every town, of any size 

 or consequence, he finds a public museum ; but how often does he find any 

 part of that museum devoted to the illustration of the productions of the 

 district ? The very feature which of all others would give interest and value 

 to the collection, which would render it most useful for teaching-purposes, has 

 in most instances been omitted, or so treated as to be altogether useless. Un- 

 fortunately, not a few country museums are httle better than raree shows. 

 * * * Curiosities from the South Seas — relics worthless in themselves, de- 

 riving their interest from association with persons or localities — a few badly 

 stuffed quadrupeds, rather more birds, a stuffed snake, a skinned alKgator, part 

 of an Egyptian mummy, Indian gods, a case or two of shells — the bivalves 

 usually single, and the univalves decorticated — a sea-urchin without its spines, 

 a few common corals, the fruit of a double cocoa-nut, some mixed antiquities — 

 partly local, partly Etruscan, partly Roman and Egyptian — and a case of 

 minerals and miscellaneous fossils ; such is the inventory and about the scientific 

 order of their contents." — Edward Eorbes, on Educational Uses of Museums, 

 page 13. 



