Ltmestone Caves. 231 
the rock crumbled away to a considerable depth. 
Although the aboriginals made use of these rock- 
shelters, they could in no sense be called cave- 
dwellers. We cannot speak of the Australian 
aboriginal as we do of the ancient Briton in referring 
to cave-dwellers. Nothing has been found in our 
cave-shelters to throw much light on the primitive 
inhabitants of Australia. 
We are, however, concerned here with limestone 
caves ; and, in passing, it may be well to say that even 
in these man has left no geological history. The 
Australian blaekfellow never lived in caves — his aim 
presumably, in the past, as it is most certainly in the 
present, being to get away from underground caves as 
far and as expeditiously as possible. The present 
writer can vouch for the fact, that a blaekfellow 
develops an astonishing activity and quite unexpected 
resources in avoiding even the neighbourhood of 
underground caves. 
Limestone Caves. ' 
Caves and underground caverns open up to the 
lover of novelty a new world, and they are at the 
same time hardly less full of interest to the man 
of science. The natural beauty and ornamentation 
of limestone caves must have been a fertile source of 
wonder from the earliest times. There is enough of 
the weird and uncanny in their dim recesses to have 
powerfully impressed primitive man. Then, again, 
legend and story peopled these underground mansions 
