EEPOET ON THE EXPLORATION OF BEIXHAM CAVE. 
487 
thus at about 15 feet south of the north entrance, and adjacent to the west wall of the 
Reindeer Gallery, the “bone-bed” occupied a funnel-shaped pipe (c) 5 feet deep, 12 and 
4 inches in diameter at its upper and lower ends respectively, and penetrating vertically 
downwards into the bed below ; and in the West Chamber the loam filled in the inferior 
bed a basin-shaped hollow (d) almost as large as the chamber itself, and upwards of 
4 feet deep (fig. 2, Plate XLIII.). 
The West Chamber and the adjacent portion of the Flint-knife Gallery were com- 
pletely filled to the roof (Plate XLIII. fig. 2). It may be doubted, however, whether 
the materials above what may be called its ordinary level should be regarded as 
really a portion of the third bed. They consisted of thin fragments of limestone 
and a small quantity of dry inadherent earthy matter of a drab colour, instead of the 
tenacious reddish loam so characteristic of bone-caverns It is probable that 
much of these materials fell through the cross fracture (m) in the roof of the Flint-knife 
Gallery, and perhaps at a comparatively recent period. 
With the exception of most of those found in the “basin” just mentioned 
every unequiaxed object lay with its longest axis in the plane of the bed, and the 
shortest at right angles to it; in other words, their centres of gravity occupied the 
lowest position possible. In the basin “ d,” on the contrary, such objects were com- 
monly found sticking in the loam at right and various other high angles to the plane of 
the horizon. 
At the northern end of the Crystal Gorge, within the vertical range, and forming 
part of the third bed, there were six or seven plates of compact, crystalline, soil-stained, 
finely laminated stalagmite, extending horizontally from wall to wall one over the other 
in a vertical series, and alternating with an equal number of interstratified layers of the 
ordinary reddish loam, which, as well as the plates of stalagmite, varied from half an 
inch to upwards of an inch and a half in thickness. 
The Fourth or Gravel Bed was in all cases the basis on which the third was depo- 
sited ; it consisted mainly of pebbles of different kinds of rock, — quartz, greenstone, 
grit, and limestone, mixed with small fragments of shale common in the Brixham dis- 
trict. In short it was made up essentially of such materials as were amongst the acci- 
dents of the bed above, and which, with the sole exception of the limestone fragments, 
were not derivable from Windmill Hill. Two of the pebbles were so remarkably round 
that, in addition to samples of the gravel, it was thought desirable to preserve them 
amongst the specimens illustrative of the cavern. The first is a sensibly spherical red 
sandstone ball, about inch in diameter, and was found near the upper surface of 
the bed at the mouth of the Steep Slide Flole. Balls of this character, probably of 
concretionary origin, are common in the New Red Sandstone at Dawlish and other parts 
of south-eastern Devonshire. The second is larger, less spherical, and composed of very 
compact grit approaching to quartzite. It was found in the West Chamber in the upper 
portion of the bed. Though in most cases a loose aggregation of pebbles, the gravel 
was occasionally cemented into a conglomerate. In the easternmost 14 feet of the 
mdccclxviii. 3 u 
