CAVE WITH BONES, IN SOMERSET. 
57 
I.—CAVE OF HUTTON, IN THE MENDIP HILLS. 
The first I shall mention is that of teeth and bones of elephants 
and other antediluvian animals discovered in the Mendip Hills in 
cavities of mountain limestone, which were lined, and nearly filled 
with ochreous clay. These are preserved in the collection of the 
Eev. Mr. Catcott, in the City Library at Bristol. The following ac¬ 
count of them is extracted by my friend the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, 
from Mr. Catcott’s MS. notes; he has added also a few explanatory 
observations. 
“ The ochre pits were worked about the middle of the last century, 
near the summit of the Mendip Hills, on the S. of the village of 
Hutton, near Banwell, at an elevation of from three hundred to four 
hundred feet above the level of the sea: they are now abandoned # . 
“ The ochre was pursued through fissures in the mountain lime¬ 
stone, occasionally expanding into larger cavernous chambers, their 
range being in a steep descent, and almost perpendicular. Thus, in 
opening the pits, the workmen, after removing eighteen inches of 
vegetable mould, and four feet of rubbly ochre, came to a fissure in 
the limestone rock, about eighteen inches broad, and four feet long. 
This was filled with good ochre, but as yet no bones were discovered: 
* I shall presently mention an analogous case of the occurrence of ochre in a similar 
series of caverns in Derbyshire, near Wirksworth, and in some caves and fissures, filled 
with a similar accumulation of diluvial matter, on the continent, at Theux, near Spa. In 
the latter case it is accompanied with a large admixture of pebbles, hut no bones. 
