nRITISn ASSOCIATION MEETrNO. 
435 
The liitlo villafjc of Orcston is sif uat-cil on (he loft bank, and very near the 
mouth of the tidal cstiiarv of the I'lyni, wiiicli, uiidcn- the name of Cat watcr, is 
one of the harbours that nature has so liberally grouped tof>ether at i'lynioulh. 
It- is essentially a limestone village, being based on, built of, and surrounded 
by limestone; its cliief prospect consists of the limestoue-iiills and (piarries of 
Catdown, from which Catwatcsr divides it ; behind it are tiie (luarries whence 
tlie stone for the celebrated Plymouth breakwater was hcwii, and its only trade 
is the exportation of limestone. 
It appears from a paper in tlie Philosophical Transactions for 1817 that 
"when Mr. Whidbey engaged to superintend that most arduous undertaking 
the Plymouth breakwater Sir Joseph Banks requested him to examine nar- 
rowly any caverns lie might meet witii in the rock, and have tiie bones, or any 
other fossil-remains that were met with carefully preserved."* This limestone 
is regarded by geologists as the Devonshire equivalent of the Old Red sand- 
stone. Like the limestones of South Devon generally, it is much fissured and 
broken ; hence the expectation that caverns would be found in it was most 
reasonable. 
The result of the request made by Sir Joseph has been tiic discovery 
that the voliune of limestone at Orcston is a geological classic of great 
interest. From time to time, jiortions of it have been translated by the great 
Sialxontologieal scholars, Sir Everard Home, Dr. Biickland, Mr. Clift, and 
'rofessor Owen, and given to the world in various forms and publications. 
Three papers on the subject will be found in the " Philosophical Transac- 
tions." Orcston also figures largely in Dr. Buekland's " Reliqua; Diluviaiia;," 
and in Professor Owen's " Eritish Fossil Mammalia and Birds." 
The Orcston quarries were opened to furnish the materials for the Break- 
water on the 7th August, 1812. In November, 181G, Mr. Whidbey sent up 
to Sir Joseph Banks his first consigiinient of bones, with a statement that 
" They had oeen ff)und in a cavern in the solid limestone-rock, fifteen feet wide, 
forty-five feet long, taking the direction into the cUff, and twelve feet deep. 
This cavern was filled with solid clay, in which the bones were imbedd.ed at 
about three feet above its base. 
When Mr. Whidbey began to w'ork this quarry, the rock was seventy- 
four feet perpendicular above high-water ; the bones were found seventy feet 
below the surface of the rock, and about four feet above liigh-water 
mark. He quarried sixty feet horizontally into the cliff before he came to the 
cavern. 
Before Mr Whidbey began to quarry h.ere one hundred feet had been 
quarried into the cKff, so that one hundi'ed and sixty feet was the distance 
between the cavern and the original edge of the cliff ; in all other directions 
the quarries consist of compact limestone to a great extent. The workmen 
came to this cavern by blasting through the solid rock, and at the depth in the 
rock at wliich it was met with the surrounding limestone was everywhere 
equally strong and requiring the same labour to quarry it. Mr. Whidbey saw 
no possibility of the cavern having had any external communication thi-ough 
the rock in which it was inclosed. 
" Many such caverns," Mr. Whidbey says, " have been met with in these 
quarries, and, in some instances, the rock on the inside was crusted with 
stalactite ; but nothing of that kind was met with iu the cavern in which the 
bones were found, so that there is no proof that any opening in the rock from 
above had been closed by infiltration. "f 
The above-mentioned fossils were described by Sir Everard Home in a paper 
* Philosophical Transactions, 1817, p. 176. 
t Ibid, 1821, pp. 133-4. 
