70 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. III. 
The bones are in a state of high preservation, and from a 
nearly full grown animal, and, being found so close together, 
are without doubt portions of a skeleton which lay entire in 
the middle of the cave before the materials that had filled it 
began to subside. There were no supernumerary bones, to 
indicate the presence of a second rhinoceros ; but in the 
same cave were found some teeth and bones of a horse, and 
many entire bones from the legs of a very large ox, all 
apparently from one individual; also many bones of deer 
from at least four individuals, and fragments of horns, none 
so large as those of red deer. From the circumstance that 
none of these bones have marks of partial decay on one 
surface only, we may infer that they were derived from 
animals that perished by the waters that introduced them 
to the cave : they arc of a yellowish brown colour. . . . 
“ For some time after the cave was penetrated there was 
no apparent communication between its interior and the 
surface ; but as the loose materials that at first filled it 
subsided into and were taken out by the shaft, a sinking 
appeared in the field above at I, and a further mass of 
the same kind, viz. clay and fragments of limestone, mixed 
with a few rolled pebbles of quartz, continued to fall down¬ 
wards into it (like the contents of a limekiln, sinking to¬ 
wards the lower aperture by which the lime is extracted), 
until a large open chasm D, more than six feet broad, and 
fifty feet deep, was left entirely void, and seemed to form 
a direct communication from the side of the cave to the 
surface of the field above. Till undermined in this manner, 
the fissure D had been entirely filled, and the surface 
afforded not the slightest indication of its existence ; at 
present it is restored to the same state of an open chasm 
in which it probably was before the access of the diluvian 
waters, that appear to have swept into it the mud and 
rocky fragments which filled both it and the cave below ; 
and on examining its sides, I found the projecting parts of 
them rubbed and scratched by the descent of these heavy 
bodies as they dropped in from above. 
“ From the situation of the rhinoceros’ bones in the 
middle of this drifted mass, and in the centre of the cave, 
