62 
CAVE NEAR WIRKSWORTH, 
1822, some miners engaged in pursuing a lead vein had sunk a shaft 
about sixty feet through solid mountain limestone (see Plate XX. 
a. b. h.), when they suddenly penetrated a large cavern e, filled 
entirely to the roof with a confused mass of argillaceous earth 
and fragments of stone, through which they attempted to continue 
their shaft perpendicularly downwards to the vein below; in this 
operation they were interrupted by the earth and fragments be¬ 
ginning to move and fall in upon them continually from the sides, 
until the roof of a large cavern became apparent, in consequence 
of the subsidence and removal of the matter with which it had been 
filled. It was nearly in the centre of this subsiding mass, and at the 
height of many feet above the actual floor of the cave, that the work¬ 
men discovered the bones f g, which I am about to describe, and of 
which those belonging to the rhinoceros g lay very near each other, 
and probably formed an entire skeleton before they were disturbed 
by the agitation and sinking of the materials e, in which they were 
imbedded. The following parts of a rhinoceros, all apparently from 
the same individual, have been collected; viz. the head, its central 
part being much broken, ten molar teeth, one entire side of the 
under jaw, and a large fragment of the other side; the atlas entire 
and fitting the head, two cervical vertebrae, several dorsal and two 
caudal ditto, with numerous fragments of ribs; the sacrum and 
several parts of the pelvis, the humerus, ulna, and radius of both 
fore legs, the femur and tibia of both the hind legs, both patella;, 
and several pair of corresponding bones from the right and left feet, 
and the joints of the tarsus and carpus. All these are in a state of 
high preservation, and from a nearly full grown animal, and being 
