22 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
three splinters of deer horn. There had been a common end for 
one and all. At the same time there was unmistakable testimony 
that the presence of man, like that of the hysena, was not wholly 
accidental. In the centre of the mass of the stalagmite of the 
breccia loosened by the blast, and afterwards broken, were a few 
fragments of charcoal. They were wholly enclosed in the stalagmite, 
and had all the appearance of embers of a burnt- out fire. Minute 
fragments of charcoal were also found in the concrete-floor, and 
still more in the cave-earth, at a depth of eight feet below. Hence 
it seems a reasonable conclusion that man as well as the hyaena 
must have been at least an occasional dweller in the cave. 
By elimination we are brought to my third suggestion, that 
water was the agent of deposit. No fact was ascertained that 
militated against this view. The confused manner in which the 
bodies had been thrown together, and piled up at the end of the 
fissure, at once suggested a sudden rush of water. 
The concrete-floor and cave-earth, on the contrary, were probably 
due to the action, over a lengthened period, of waters occasionally 
finding their way from the upper reaches of the cavern to the lower. 
The manner in which the remains were distributed, and their 
generally fragmentary character, all pointed to gradual and casual 
occurrence. At the same time the evident association of some of 
the bones here also rendered it clear that in their case at any rate 
there had been no re-deposition. 
Further, the active causes of the formation of both deposits were 
immediately local. No continuous stream had flowed into or through 
the cavern from a distance. The most careful search revealed no 
single fragment of stone (with one exception, noted hereafter) 
foreign to the immediate neighbourhood. A few fragments of 
slate apart, all were limestone. 
All that was required to produce the concrete-floor and cave- 
earth was, then, the occasional falling, and washing by the internal 
drainage of the cavern in rainy weather, of earth and stones and 
fragmentary animal remains from the higher parts of the cavern. 
The remains of the stalagmitic-breccia are as readily accounted 
for by a sudden rush of waters, bearing with it the bodies of 
drowned animals, pouring into the cave, and carrying before 
it whatever occupants the place may have had — certainly the 
hysena among the number. Nor does it require any great stretch 
