472 
EEPOET ON THE EXPLOEATION OF BEIXHAM CAVE. 
44 It is well known that a great and popular impulse was given to Geology in this 
country by the well-directed and eminently successful researches of the late Dr. Buckland 
on the ossiferous caves of England. After the publication of the 4 Reliquiae Diluvianse,’ 
the subject in its general bearings was regarded as pretty well exhausted, so far at least 
as concerned the uniformity of character in the fossil remains found in the caverns, and 
their being referable to a single geological period. Since 1823 the interest in the subject 
has gradually fallen off ; and it is probably not overstating the fact to say that there is 
hardly a general geological question in which the majority of geologists in this country 
take less interest at present than in what relates to the ossiferous caves. The subject 
has not advanced ‘pari passu ’ with the progress in the investigation of the Upper Plio- 
cene and Postpliocene deposits. 
“ It was understood that Dr. Buckland before the close of his valuable life had intended 
to bring out a second edition of the 4 Reliquiae Diluvianae,’ in which some of the ques- 
tionable views so earnestly advocated in the original work would have been greatly 
modified; but unfortunately the design remained unaccomplished, and the popular 
opinions in the cave-districts where collections were amassed have been mainly regu- 
lated by the doctrines embodied in the work as published in 1823. 
44 The consequences have been thus : — the Tunnel caves like 6 Kirkdale,’ which were 
haunts of predaceous carnivora, and the Fissure caves like 4 Oreston,’ that were filled 
from above, have been popularly regarded as containing the debris of the same mam- 
malian fauna, and as having been overlaid with their ochreous loam by the same common 
agency at the same period. The contents of the different caverns were thus considered 
as being in great measure duplicates of one another ; and the exceptional presence of 
certain forms in one case and their absence in another were regarded more in the light 
of local accidents than as significant of any general source of difference. lienee it fol- 
lowed that more attention was paid to the extrication of the bones and to securing good 
specimens, than to a record of their relative association and the order of succession in 
which they occurred. The remains have been, in some instances, huddled together in 
provincial collections — the contents of five or six distinct caves without a discriminative 
mark to indicate out of which particular cavern they came. Another consequence has 
been that, being regarded in the light of duplicates, the contents of some of the most 
important and classical English caverns have been dispersed piecemeal, and, so far as 
regards them, the evil is now beyond remedy. 
44 My object in this communication is to bring to the notice of the Council an interesting 
case of a newly discovered and intact cavern, where the mischief done elsewhere may be 
partly retrieved, and probably much effected, by combined action well directed. 
44 Within the last month a new and undisturbed cave has been discovered on 4 Wind- 
mill Hill,’ overhanging Brixham, in the same tract of limestone in which the caverns 
of Kent’s Hole, Anstis Cove, Chudleigh, and Berry Head are found. A brief notice 
of the discovery appeared in the Exeter 4 Western Times’ of the 10th ultimo. Mr. 
Everest and myself went to see it on the 17th ultimo. 
