68 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. III. 
in the grave: it is a substance, however, which occurs 
abundantly in the limestone rocks of the neighbourhood. 
From all these circumstances there is reason to conclude 
that the date of these human bones is coeval with that of the 
military occupation of the adjacent summits, and anterior to, 
or coeval with, the Roman invasion of this country. . . . 
“ It remains only to describe a long, cavernous aperture 
that rises like a crooked chimney from its roof to the 
nearly vertical face of the rock above : its form and 
diameter are throughout irregular, the latter being about 
twelve feet where longest, and in its narrowest part about 
three feet; so that it is impossible the large elephant, 
whose bones were found in the cave below, could have 
been drifted down entire through this aperture. It ex¬ 
pands and contracts irregularly from D (see Plate), its 
lower extremity in the roof of the cavern, to K, the point 
at which it terminates in the face of the cliff. 
“ Along this tortuous ascent are several lateral cavities, 
L.L.L. the bottoms of which afford a place of lodgment 
for a bed of brown earth, about a foot thick, and derived 
apparently from dust driven in continually by the wind. 
In this earth I found the bones of various birds and 
fish, and a few land shells, of moles, water-rats, and mice, 
and their presence here can only be explained by 
referring them to the agency of hawks, and fish-bones to 
that of the seagulls. The land shells are such as live 
at present on the rock without, and may easily have 
fallen in. Had there been any stalagmite uniting these 
bones into a breccia 1 they would have afforded a per¬ 
fect analogy to the accumulation of modern birds’ bones, 
by the agency of hawks, at Gibraltar ; where Major Imrie 
describes them as forming a breccia of modern origin in 
fissures of the same rock which has other cavities filled 
with a bony breccia of more ancient date, and which are 
of the same antediluvian origin with the older parts of the 
bones that occur on the floor of the cave at Paviland.” 2 
1 Breccia consists of fragments of different rocks cemented together. 
2 Miss Talbot, the present owner of Penrice Castle, writes from 
