MELLO : CRESWELL CAVES. 
255 
the cave earth was light in colour and very calcareous, but in other 
parts where it was thicker it was darker, and in two of the chambers 
(G. and F.) its lower portion contained numerous fragments of lime- 
stone, giving it a mottled appearance. Below the cave earth and 
breccia a local deposit of gravel and conglomerate occurred, the re- 
sult, it may have been, of some sudden flood or of a stream running 
for a short period through part of the Cave. 
The Cave-earth rested on a bed of red sand, similar in character 
to that already described in the Pin Hole. Some portions of this 
sand were highly ferruginous, and had a good deal of tough 
laminated red clay mingled with it in its lower portions, especially 
near the entrance of the Cave. This clay may have been connected 
with the same flow of water by which after wards the gravel was 
brought in. The lowest deposit found was whitish sand with 
angular blocks of limestone, which evidently formed part of the 
original floor of the Cave. A general section of the beds of the 
Robin Hood Cave gives us in descending order 
1. Surface soil, recent, and Romano British remains. 
2. Stalagmite and breccia, flint implements and bones. 
3. Cave earth, variable, bones and implements. 
4 . Red sand, clay at base, bones and implements. 
5. Whitish sandy floor. 
In the surface soil of this Cave some remains of the fugitive 
Romano British populations were found, consisting of fragments of 
Samian and other earthenware, bronze fibulae, and a roughly carved 
bone with an iron socket, which may have been the boss of a sword 
or dagger. Numerous bones of animals common in prehistoric and 
Roman times were present in the same soil, amongst others the 
Celtic shorthorn, the goat and sheep, the stag, wild cat, badger, fox 
and horse. 
The succeeding deposits of the Cave, with somewhat remark- 
able suddenness, carry us at once from the ages of history into that 
far distant past when the wild fauna of the Pleistocene epoch, the 
contemporaries and antagonists of the Palaeolithic tribes of men 
were present in full force in this country j of the intervening 
Neolithic and Bronze ages there was no certain trace found in this 
