THE BONE CAVES OF THE PLYMOUTH DISTRICT. 
91 
uppermost of the series was only 17 feet below the surface.* Of 
the five chambers the lowest was the largest, and here the bulk of 
the bones were found. They were " mostly covered with dirt. . . . 
Part of the bones were lying on the dirt, and in crevices about the 
caves, "f Many of the bones were found in an inner recess. This 
discovery was made about the middle of 1822. On the 19th 
August in that year Mr. Whidbey forwarded his find as before to 
the Royal Society, and the bones were reported on by Mr. Clift, 
Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, 
wherein they were deposited. This collection was not only much 
larger, but wholly different in character to the preceding. The 
bones were those of ox, deer, horse, hysena, wolf, and fox, and 
they occurred in this curiously .separated form : though the cavities 
commimicated " the bones of the different graminivorous animals 
were found mingled together in the same cavity ; but those of the 
carnivora at a considerable distance from each other ; the bones of 
the hyaena having been discovered in the [second or inner of the 
two lower] cavern .... and those of the wolf and fox in the 
gallery " fa passage described by Mr. Whidbey as leading from the 
outer cave to the surface of the quarry.] J 
There are two other points to be noted in regard to this collection. 
A portion of the radius of a young wolf had " the impression of 
the incisors and canine teeth of some small animal of the size of 
a weasel." This was the only bone that bore any appearance of 
having been gnawed or otherwise mutilated. § Two of the bovine 
bones unequivocally showed " the effects of ossific inflammation on 
their surface," and in the lower jaw of a young wolf "an abscess 
on each side had produced sinuses, and a considerable alteration in 
its form and texture. || 
The bovine bones included three horn cores of different indi- 
viduals, and belonged to more than a dozen animals, varying 
* J. Claringbull, " Guide to the Breakwater." Sketch to scale, p. 36. 
f Whidbey, " Phil. Trans." 1823, part i. pp. 78-81. Cited " Devon. Assoc. 
Trans.," vol. i. part i. pp. 254-5. 
X Clift, "Phil. Trans.," 1823, part. i. pp. 81-90. Cited "Devon, Assoc. 
Trans.," vol. v. part. i. pp. 255-260. This separation may be partly accounted 
for, on the supposition of water carriage, by the difference of the relative bulk 
of the two sets of animals. 
§ Clift, op. cit. Cited "Devon. Assoc. Trans.," vol. v. part i. p. 256. 
Dr. Buckland adds to this the tibia of a horse, and speaks of the wolf's bone 
as an ulna. "Reliquiae Diluvianae." j| Ibid. p. 257. 
