110 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



and the roof have since been removed by the quarr3aiien, and transported 

 in the routine of their trade to Ilfracombe or Barnstaple ; so that no cave 

 exists there now ; and the old earthy floor which contained the bones . . . 

 is covered with soil and fragments of the blasted rock. 



" Bones of the following animals were extracted from it : — Mammoth 

 [Elephas pri7nigemus), rhinoceros {Uhinoceros leptorliinus), lion, or tiger 

 {Felistigris), hysena {Kymna spelcea), bear {Ursus spelceus), horse {Equus 

 cahallus), ox, deer, wolf, fox— in short, the usual cave osseous remains of 

 extinct, together with bones of pigs, sheep, and other recent animals, some 

 identical with those which still inhabit the district. There also were found 

 bones of fish, and dorsal spines of a species of ray. The elevation of this 

 cave is upwards of 100 feet above the sea, and some of the bones in this 

 collection show the same teeth-marks described by Buckland on those of 

 the Kirkdale caves. Several have been gnawed by larger animals, and 

 some bear marks as of the teeth of a rodent, some rat perhaps. 



" The circumstances of this cave in general, and of some of the bones in 

 particular, did not confirm, but rather contradict, the conjecture that it 

 had once been a den of hyaenas, by whom they were Collected together. 

 Hysenas' bones lay about precisely in the same state as the others. The 

 whole seemed to have been forcibly carried into the cave by the action of 

 water. Some of the bones were wedged into the fissures of the rock at 

 the cave's ends, just as pieces of drift-wood and wreck are observed to be 

 on the shore beneath. Even had the dung of the hysena been observed 

 here> as in those caves described in the ' Reliquise Diluvianse,' and in Dr. 

 Falconer's report of the ossiferous caverns in Italy ^ the inference would 

 have been hasty, and probably altogether wrong, that it therefore had 

 been an hysena's den. The hysena is by nature a bone- rather than a 

 flesh-eating animal: the dung-balls consequently are almost entirely 

 formed of phosphate of lime, and are so hard that they resist the tempo- 

 rary action of water almost as well as the bones themselves — perhaps, 

 being round, even better. Moreover, if these cave-dwellers, which live in 

 pairs and are not gregarious, follow the habits of canine animals, and of 

 the badgers and foxes which abound still in this part of the kingdom, 

 they would instinctively have sought external, and even distant places. 

 Dogs are notorious for their cleanly habits in respect to their sleeping- 

 places, when they are not chained up ; and badgers retire to some place 

 distant from their holes, and to that same place every night, till at length 

 the ground even glitters in the sunshine with the elytra of the beetles, 

 chiefly the ScarahcBus stercorarius, which in summer-time forms their prin- 

 cipal food, as earth-worms do in the winter. 



" Tlie impression of the writer of this notice is, that all these ancient 

 bones were drifted into the cave by the force of water, after they had been 

 gnaAA cd and mumbled outside of it, and that the dung-balls of the hysena 

 were drifted in with them. Careful observers will hare noticed how 

 Water-floods collect together into the still places animal remains and light 

 substances at all times. 



We may account for ihe filUng of these caverns in more ways than one. 

 There are in this neighbom-hood,'and in other parts of England, at this 

 moment, certain holes and natural openings in the earthy particularly 

 wliere tlie mountain-limestone lies near the surface, into which rain-tor- 

 ronts discharge themselves, thick with the red mud, and with lighter sub- 

 stances and small stones, which they bear along down the watercourses 

 lending to tliem. These watercourses formed many of the ancient byeroads 

 and lanes of the country. There is one so situated that has engaged the 

 writer's attention in flood-time for more than twenty years ; nor is the 



