ELLIOTT — HEATHERY BURN CAVE. 



167 



is still to be learnt ; and the subject we bave now appended to our 

 more legitimate remarks is bj no means so irrelevant as at first sight 

 it might seem. It is a common thing to find the roots of ventricu- 

 lites covered over with a nodule of flint, in which holes are seen, 

 through which the finer ends only of the separate rootlets have pro- 

 truded. If these flints were originally sponges, first growing round 

 the stems and roots of young ventriculites, then their very peculiar 

 character is at once explained. But it is not by any means easy to 

 imagine how a gelatinous mass of silex could consolidate under roots 

 which in that case must have been imheclded in the chalk mud before 

 any segregation of silicious matter took place heneath them. More- 

 over, such sponge growth will explain the plugs of flint which fill the 

 central cavities of ventriculites, and the annular disks and rings 

 which sometimes form bands round their conical exteriors ; and we 

 cannot but think some fiicts are from these sources to be elicited 

 which shall have a practical bearing on the habits and living nature 

 of the ventriculites. 



PUETHER DISCOYEEIES IN HEATHEET BUEN CAYE. 

 By John Elliott, Esq. 



Since the publication of my paper " On the Discovery of Human 

 and Animal Bones in Heathery Burn Cave, near Stanhope," in the 

 ' Greologist ' fo]' January last, there have been further very important 

 discoveries made in that cave. 



In carrying on the quarrying operations from the point where 

 they were suspended (see E* — fig. 1) when the first discovered 

 relics were sent to London f the workmen found numerous frag- 

 ments of bones, also bone pins and knives, fragments of very rude 

 pottery, portion of an armlet, boar-tusks, bronze spear-head, pins, 

 celts, and armlet, two coins, some marine shells, cockle, limpet, and 

 mussels, and large quantities of charcoal, etc., all deposited under an 

 incrustation of stalagmite, varying from 2 to 4, or at some places to 

 8 inches in thickness, with the exception of one or two manufactured 

 articles, which were found in the sand not covered by stalagmite. 

 The whole of the cave-deposits, with this trifling exception, were 

 covered by a thick sheet of stalagmite, varying from a very dense, 

 compact structure, to a highly crystalline, or to a more or less porous 

 substance : some portions easily fractured by the stroke of a hammer, 

 others yielding only to most energetic blows. 



The bronze armlet and the two coins were found in sand uncovered 



t Received by tlie Editor on the 14th of April. 



