ELLIOTT — HEATHEET BURN CAVE. 
167 
is still to be learnt ; and the subject we bave now appended to our 
more legitimate remarks is by no means so irrelevant as at first sigbt 
it migbt 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 imbedded in the chalk mud before 
any segregation of silicious matter took place heneatli 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 facts are from these sources to be elicited 
which shall have a practical bearing on the habits and living nature 
of the ventriculites. 
FURTHER DISCOVERIES IN HEATHERY BURN 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 
' Geologist ' foi' 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 t 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 trifiing 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 the Editor on the 14th of April. 
