182 Explorations in the Bone Cave of Ballynamintra. 
2nd. After the first formation of the subterraneous passages and openings, the 
form of many of them was altered and modified by some such water action as 
that due to the waves at the margin of an estuary or large lake. 
3rd. A time when the caves were more or less filled by sand, gravel, and shingle ; 
the sand and gravel evidently are water drift carried into the caves. These 
accumulations, by the infiltration of my matters, were in part changed into 
‘‘oravel-stone” and ‘“shingle-stone,”” while masses of stalagmite were deposited on 
them. In the lower sand and gravel, no animal remains have as yet been found, 
but in the crystalline stalagmite, immediately on them, bears’ bones, &c., occur. 
4th. The lower gravel and sand partially removed, and the stalagmite flooring 
partially broken up. 
5th. The caves possibly inhabited by man, during which time they were in 
part refilled with the “pale sandy earth,” imbedding the blocks of the broken-up 
stalagmite. 
6th. The mineral and earthy accumulations of this cave augmented, by the 
deposition of limy matters, by materials carried into them along the subterraneous 
passages, or by falling into them through “chimneys,” the more or less vertical 
openings to the surface; or, in some cases, the rocks near the entrance of a cave 
may have weathered into shingle and fallen into it. 
In connexion with these caves it may be. mentioned that, in addition to the 
kitchen midden at Shandon, there is, on the escarpment near Whitechurch, 
townland of Ballykennedy, in a lis or clay fort, a kitchen midden ; while in the 
vicinity of the Bewley caves are the ruins of a dun or hillfort. It is hardly necessary 
to point out that these indications of human occupation refer to men who occupied 
the country probably up to very recent dates, and long after the time of the cave 
deposits. 
III.—Srrvoture anp Contents or THE BaLLtyNAMINTRA Cave, By R. J. Ussunr. 
Situation of the Cave. 
As referred to in the second portion of this report, the limestone tract between 
Dungarvan Bay and the Blackwater is broken, near Whitechurch and Cappagh, 
by the gravel-flat, running north and south, on which the Cappagh railway 
station stands. This flat merges towards the south, by a gentle fall, into the 
remarkable trough along which the sluggish Brickey, skirting the northern slope 
of the Drum, runs into Dungarvan Bay. Rocky scarps of limestone in many 
places flank this gravel flat, both along its eastern and western sides, and rise, in 
the neighbourhood of the Ballynamintra cave, to ninety-six or ninety-eight feet 
above the Ordnance zero level, the flat ground between them being forty feet 
lower, and marked fifty-eight feet on the Ordnance sheet. 
About the seventy feet contour line, a series of caves occur along the scarp, west 
of this flat; and in three of these, besides that of which we are about to speak, 
