190 Explorations in the Bone Cave of Ballynamintra. 
fourteen feet from the cave’s mouth, where the stalagmite floor was unbroken. 
Here the pale sandy earth was found underneath it, but a little further in it 
disappeared, the space under the stalagmite being hollow. From the above point 
(where it was last seen), outwards as far as the excavations went, this pale sandy 
earth enveloped and adhered to the broken masses of stalagmite, hereafter 
mentioned, which lay embedded in it in the greatest confusion. It coated their 
surfaces as if it had been deposited by water, and it was found filling cracks and 
interstices in the stalagmite floor where the latter was in place, but partially dis- 
Jointed, as at eight feet from the mouth. (See cross-section C.) This stratum 
rested on the gravel, which was the lowest in the cave, and in the vicinity 
of the swallow-holes, shown in cross-sections A and B, it was in places mixed 
with the gravel where it dipped towards those orifices. Here were found in 
it many rolled lumps of limestone exhibiting strize, one of which, No. III., has on 
one side three pits, each of which contains three furrows, and on the reverse side 
more furrows less distinct. Whether these strange markings were artificially made 
or not remains to be decided. Near the above was a rounded lump of sandstone, 
No. II., with flat faces on the opposite sides produced by rubbing. Both these 
stones suggest that they were used by man for some purpose, though their artificial 
character is doubtful, and nothing else resembling an implement was found in the 
pale sandy earth. Even the above were found near the swallow-holes, where there 
may have been some disturbance of the stratum by water. 
Near the swaliow holes, and at a depth of five or six feet below the datum level, 
were also found in this stratum an assemblage of bones of bear, similar in size to 
bones of the same species that were in the stalagmite a few feet further in, and as 
corresponding bones of the right and left sides were found in this pale sandy 
earth, and in the stalagmite respectively, it is very possible that they belonged 
to the same individual. Moreover, those bones found in the stalagmite seemed to 
have been embedded in it entire, while those above mentioned in the pale sandy 
earth had been broken, apparently after they were fossilized (though in other 
respects their condition was similar). They plainly had not been subjected to any 
great force, for their brittie angles and edges retained their sharpness, and broken 
portions of the same bone were found near one another. 
The great majority of bones in this stratum were of a pale buff tint, like those 
in the stalagmite, and, like them, were heavy, highly mineralized, and very brittle ; 
though, unlike them, these had occasionally black spots and traces of dendritis. 
They were utterly dissimilar from the bones in the two upper strata, which were 
comparatively light, and far less mineralized; while the latter differed in colour 
from those in the third and fourth strata. The pale sandy earth contained forty- 
three bones of bear, twenty-three of hare, five of pig, one of rabbit, one tooth of 
wolf, and one bone each of deer, ox, and Irish elk. The two latter having been 
found under a large piece of the stalagmite floor in clayey earth, were at first 
