186 Explorations in the Bone Cave of Ballynamintra. 
STRATIFIED Deposits. 
No. 1.—The Brown Earth. 
This was, with the exception of loose stones on the surface, everywhere upper- 
most for twenty feet inside the cave. Outside the cave’s mouth it merged into the 
loose vegetable soil, but within it was often densely packed. Its depth was generally 
from eighteen to twenty-four inches. It contained limestone fragments, angular 
bits of chert, and rounded sandstones from the drift. These materials, forming the 
staple of the stratum, correspond with the materials forming the surface on the 
cavern hill. In cross-sections C and D, beds of stones and pebbles appear in the 
brown earth. These were almost quite free from the earth, though it lay over and 
beneath them, but bones and charcoal were often met with among them, A 
similar bed of stones, shown in cross-section E, ran along the left wall on the surface. 
At seven feet outside the entrance the surface was about eighteen inches higher 
than it was at the cave’s mouth. This may be attributed to earth having rolled off 
the hill above ; the overhanging rocks that flank the entrance of the cave (and 
probably formed its continuation) not permitting such earth to fall closer in. From 
this point outwards the surface rapidly fell away. 
The brown earth contained great numbers of remains (the bones being usually 
in fragments and of a yellow colour) of rabbit, hare, goat, ox, fox, pig, red deer, 
dog, marten, horse and hedgehog, as well as of several birds, the animals first in this 
list being the most numerously represented. Among the relics found in the brown 
earth we have also one metatarsal of bear, darker than the former bones, a number 
of broken bones of the Irish elk, blackened and exhibiting dendritis, as well as the 
fragments of a human skull, several of the latter also marked with dendritis, and 
other human bones, all which, except the bear’s metatarsal, were found not far 
from the cave’s mouth at the outset of the explorations.* This blackened and 
dendritic appearance was more characteristic of the bones in the second or grey 
stratum than of those in any other. Nearly every bone of Irish elk found in the 
cave was thus marked, while the remains of domestic animals found in the same 
part of the cave with the blackened relics just mentioned had no such markings. 
The bones in the brown earth from about the tenth foot inwards appeared still 
more recent, and many were in all probability brought in by foxes, who as well as 
rabbits had undoubtedly inhabited the inner cavity beyond the part we are now 
treating of, for burrows were found in the earthy accumulations beyond thirty feet 
from the entrance, to which the tunnels in the calc tufa served as entrances. No 
burrows however were found in the open part of the cave outside these tunnels, 
nor any appearance of the strata having been there disturbed by them. 
In this stratum charcoal was frequent, aud found everywhere. Its last 
* Owing to the obscurity of the section where these bones marked with dendritis were found, it is 
quite possible that they may have belonged to the second rather than to the first stratum. 
