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CHAPTER XIII. 
GLACIAL THEORIES : CAVE EXPLORATIONS AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
Sixteen years previous to the formation of this Society, a cave 
had been discovered in Kirkdale, three or four miles east of Helmsley, 
The entrance to the cave was in a large quarry of Oolitic Limestone, 
and this had been quarried back thirty feet before the present entrance 
was reached. The entrance was about three feet high and five 
feet broad ; the cave expands and contracts irregularly in width from 
two to seven feet, and two to fourteen feet in height, diminishing as 
it recedes to the interior of the hill. It is twenty feet below the sur- 
face, and its course is intersected by vertical fissures. It was not 
till the summer of 1821 that the existence of animal remains in this 
cave was suspected. The workmen accidentally discovered amongst 
the sand and clay, which almost fill the entrance, some fragments of 
bone. The bottom of the cave, to the average depth of about a foot, 
was filled with argillaceous and micaceous loam, occasionally inter- 
spersed with lenticular beds of sand. Above the mud was a coating 
of stalactite. The workmen supposed the bones which they found to 
have belonged to cattle, which had by some means got into the cave 
from above. They were afterw^ards noticed by Mr. Harrison, of 
Kirby Moorside, who collected a large number of them, which were 
dispersed amongst individuals and afterwards lost. Some of the 
specimens came into the possession of the Bishop of Oxford, who pre 
sented a large series to the Museum at Oxford, and Dr. Buckland 
thus received his first information of the existence of the cave. In 
its whole extent only a very few large bones have been discovered in 
even a tolerably perfect condition. Most of them were broken into 
small angular fragments and chips, which were laid separately in the 
