REPORT ON TIIE EXPLORATION OF BRIXHAM CAVE. 
555 
perfect and have no indication of having been rolled by water and he repeats the same 
observations in speaking of the state of the bones of the other animals. This condition 
of the bones is hardly compatible with their having been carried in by water, but is in 
accordance with the conclusion Mr. Busk has independently arrived at with Mr. Bristow, 
and which agrees with our own, that the cave must at one time have been a place of 
resort to Hytenas, by whom most of the remains of other animals were brought in, often 
in the state of entire limbs surrounded by their soft parts. He is further of opinion 
that at a later period of the cave it was used as a place of refuge and at times of par- 
turition by the Bears, as the bones of very young animals, sometimes mere sucking cubs, 
are often found together in heaps, and are neither rolled nor gnawed. Of very young 
Hyasnae there are no traces. 
At the same time Mr. Busk mentions a left metacarpal bone of horse “ quite entire 
and not rolled, which seems to have been for some time exposed on the surface, or partly 
imbedded in the ground, as it is much weathered or sun-cracked, principally at one end 
and he notices the same appearances on some other bones, leading, as he considers, to the 
inference that some portion of the bone-remains had been exposed to the open air on 
the surface of the ground, and afterwards washed into the cave by the action of a stream 
of water. 
The dispersion of the bones of the same limbs in different parts of the cave did not 
escape the notice of Mr. Pengelly, and he accounts for the fact by their separate intro- 
duction and transport to variable distances into the cave by the stream ; but the cases 
in which Mr. Busk has recognized an original connexion between the bones of the same 
animal in different and distant parts of the cave are sufficiently numerous, and their 
general condition is so alike and irrespective of position, that it is, we conceive, taking 
all other considerations into account, more probable that the limbs were, as he sup- 
poses, carried in entire, and that, as they were devoured, the bones were dispersed by the 
animals themselves through different parts of the cave. 
The total number of bones found in the cave amounts to 1621 ; but of these as many 
as 691 belong to birds, rodents, and other small animals, which with few, if any exceptions, 
were brought in at a comparatively recent period, leaving 930 specimens belonging to 
the old cave-animals proper. Of these 669 have been determined by Mr. Busk, and 261 
were in such a fragmentary state as not to be determinable. The number of species has 
proved more restricted than was anticipated, and the remains of only one Elephant and 
one Bhinoceros, both the common Pleistocene species, have been found. But though 
the species are limited in number, an addition has nevertheless been made to the cave- 
fauna of an unexpected and very interesting nature. Mr. Busk has determined the 
presence of two, and probably of three, species of Bear, viz. TJrsus priscus, U. arctos, and 
more doubtfully JJ. spelceus , the first named (which Mr. Busk was led, in this case for 
the first time, to identify with the Ursus ferox) being by far the most abundant. It 
would thus seem that, in addition to the Musk-Ox, whose remains have within the last 
few years been discovered in the quaternary beds of this country and in the north of 
