87 
It was suggested when we first found the boulders that 
they might not have been left there by the ice- sheet, but , 
might have fallen from the clifi* subsequently. This question 
has been thoroughly investigated since, and the evidence 
given in the British Association Report for 1874 ; * as the 
facts and arguments there used have not been disputed, I will 
not treat this question at length. 
Briefly the evidence is this — 
1. The boulders lie at the base of all the screes, which 
are 19 feet thick, and no other boulders occur throughout that 
whole thickness. 
2. The cliff immediately above the cave is quite free from 
boulders for a considerable distance. 
3. The screes (talus) are allowed to be the result of the 
destruction of the cliff above by atmospheric agencies, and, 
as they lie above all the boulders, must have fallen subse- ' 
quently. Even now the boulders lie so close beneath the 
cliff that it would be barely possible for them to fall from 
it into their present position. But if we could restore to the 
<;liff all the limestone screes lying above the boulders, such a 
fall would be quite impossible. 
4. The extent of the glacial deposits now exposed is so 
great, covering an area of 1,200 square feet or more, that it 
is impossible that they can be a mere chance accumulation of 
boulders. 
The Life of the Earlier Periods. — We have now brieflj^ 
gone through the physical aspect of the earKer beds in the 
Victoria Cave. It remains, as far as we can from the facts at 
our disposal, to restore in imagination the living beings who 
roamed about in Craven at the different periods represented 
by these beds. In the Lower Cave-Earth in the lowest bone 
P. 133. 
