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CAVES AND THEIR OCCUPANTS. 
ILLUSTRATED BY THE BONE CAYES OF CRESWELL CRAGS. 
By the REV. J. MAGENS MELLO, M.A., F.G.S., etc. 
C AVES and their exploration have for a considerable number 
of years past excited a great amount of interest in the 
scientific world. The Physicist, the Archaeologist, and the 
Greologist have each in their turn found in them much to 
occupy their attention. Physical Geology has gained from 
cavern researches an insight into some of those vast operations 
of Nature, which, carried on quietly and persistently during an 
incalculable number of years, have done so much in many parts 
of the earth, in its secret recesses, to fashion and sculpture its 
rocky crust. We have been taught how in numerous instances 
the extensive and deep valleys of our limestone districts have 
been actually formed by the dissolution of the solid rock, 
through the agency of water charged with carbonic acid gas ; 
whilst the same rock, redeposited in an altered form, has built 
up those thick beds of calc-tuff so common in the same locali- 
ties. The study of cavern-structure has also led to our under- 
standing much as to the formation of mineral veins, and has 
brought to light many strange facts as to the circulation of 
subterranean water. But to many the chief interest of caverns 
consists in the contents so often buried in their floors, in the 
remains of the ancient tenants — wild beasts and men — by 
whom they have been alternately occupied. 
Caves are common to all parts of the world, and may be met 
with in rocks of very varied age ; not alone in the Carboniferous 
or Mountain Limestone, in which they are so very frequent, but 
also in the older limestones of Silurian age, and in those of the 
younger Permian and Jurassic rocks. Even sandstone rocks 
are in many instances, especially where exposed to marine 
denudation, found to be excavated into caverns of greater or 
less extent. 
Every country has its caves. All have heard of the gigantic 
Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, in America, the ramifications of 
