CAVES AT ORESTON, NEAR PLYMOUTH. 
67 
than a few fragments of limestone that scale off daily and fall from 
their sides, and the bones of cattle and recent animals that tumble in 
continually, and there perish. 
5.—-THREE SETS OF CAVES NEAR PLYMOUTH. 
The fifth example I have to adduce is that of three deposits of 
bones discovered at Oreston, near Plymouth, by Mr. Whidby, in re¬ 
moving the entire mass of a hill of transition limestone for the con¬ 
struction of the Breakwater. The first of these is described by Sir 
Everard Home and Mr. Whidby, in the Philosophical Transactions 
for 1817. They were found in a cavern fifteen feet wide, twelve 
high, and forty-five long, and about four feet above high-water mark; 
it was filled with solid clay (probably diluvial mud) in which the 
teeth and bones were imbedded, and was intersected in blasting away 
the body of the rock to make the Breakwater. The state of the 
teeth and bones was the same with that of those found in the caves 
already described ; they were much broken, but not in the slightest 
degree rounded by attrition, and Sir Everard Home has ascertained 
them to belong exclusively to a species of rhinoceros. A similar dis¬ 
covery of teeth and bones was made in 1820, in a smaller cavern, 
distant one hundred and twenty yards from the former, being one 
foot high, eighteen wide, and twenty long, and eight feet above the 
high-water mark; a description of its contents is given in the Philo¬ 
sophical Transactions for 1821, by the same gentlemen; it contained 
no stalactite, which abounds in many of the adjacent caverns. Sir 
k 2 
