RECENT BONES IN AN UPPER VAULT. 
93 
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 con¬ 
tinually by the wind. In this earth I found the bones of various birds, 
of moles, water-rats, mice, and fish, and a few land shells; all these are 
clearly the remains of modern animals, and their presence in this almost 
inaccessible spot can only be explained by referring the bones of birds, 
moles, rats, and mice, to the agency of hawks, and the fish-bones to 
that of sea-gulls. 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, they would have afforded 
a perfect 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 I shall presently endeavour to show is of the same antediluvian 
origin with the older parts of the bones that occur on the floor of the 
cave at Paviland. 
Whilst exploring this cavern, I was informed by the workmen that 
there was another of the same kind about a hundred yards further to 
the west; and proceeding to examine it, I found it to be very similar 
to the first, in size, form, and position, and closed on every side with 
solid rock, excepting the mouth, which is large and open to the sea; 
its body contracts gradually towards the inner extremity, and upwards 
also towards the roof, where it terminates in a vein, that is still filled 
with calcareous spar: the cave itself, in fact, seems to be merely an 
enlargement of this vein. There is also a similar, but longer and 
more narrow, aperture immediately on the east of Goats Hole, the 
