THE CATTEDOWN BONE CAVE. 
13 
The limestone quarries at Cattedown have been worked for ages, 
but a period of exceptional activity set in some ninety years 
since ; and at various points the cliffs were worked back from 
Cattewater to some distance inland. In spots these operations 
were then abandoned; in others they have continued to the 
present day. One of the localities where excavation ceased 
became the site of Messrs. Hill's shipbuilding yard, recently 
acquired by Messrs. Burnard, Lack, and Alger for the extension 
of their manure works. Messrs. Burnard and Alger have con- 
structed extensive wharves on their waterside frontage in Catte- 
water; and in connection with this have partially reworked 
the old quarry at the back of the ship-yard, at a lower level, the 
foot of the new face being twelve to fifteen feet beneath the level 
of the old floor, part of which was long used as a garden. 
This quarry, in the first instance, was wrought to a depth 
of sixty feet below the original surface of the hill ; and the 
old floor was partly overlaid next the cliff by a spoil-bank of 
earth and small stones, which formed a talus. 
Soon after excavation commenced, in autumn of 1886, the 
men broke through the east wall of a fissure containing earth and 
small stones, and ere long found a few bones, of which they took 
no heed. Subsequently more were discovered, and then the 
attention of Mr. Kobert Burnard was called to them. These 
bones were bovine and of little note ; but Mr. Inglis having told 
me of the circumstance, the possibility of their having successors 
led me to call on Mr. Burnard. He at once kindly promised that 
all care should be exercised in the further excavation, and that 
whatever turned up should be put aside for my examination. 
We have, however, to express our hearty thanks for very much 
more than this. The firm have spared neither trouble nor outlay 
in the explorations to which circumstances afterwards led; and 
Mr. Eobert Burnard has given the work a personal attention and 
supervision, for which we cannot be too grateful. 
It was not long before a fresh discovery was made, and this 
time bovine and caprine were accompanied by human remains — 
fragments of a skull, a lower jaw, and a number of phalanges ; 
but there was no distinct evidence of their position. The material 
had now been cleared sufficiently to reveal a considerable fissure 
running north and south, and open to the floor of the old quarry — 
