REPORTS

ON

THE STATE OF SCIENCE.

Twelfth Report of the Committee for Exploring Kent's Cavern, Devonshire, the Committee consisting of JOHN EVANS, F.R.S., Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., F.R.S., EDWARD VIVIAN, M.A., GEORGE BUSK, F.R.S., WILLIAM BOYD DAWKINS, F.R.S., WILLIAM AYSHFORD SANFORD, F.G.S., JOHN EDWARD LEE, F.G.S., and WILLIAM PENGELLY, F.R.S. (Reporter).

THE Eleventh Report, presented by the Committee to the Association during the Meeting at Bristol in 1875, and read to the Geological Section *, brought up the narrative of the exploration to the end of July of that year. From that date the work, which is still in progress, has been carried on uninterruptedly, in all respects as in previous years; and it is intended in the present Report to describe the researches made during the thirteen months ending 31st of August of the present year.

Though the Committee have still the satisfaction of stating that they retain the valuable services of George Smerdon, foreman of the work, they have to add that Nicholas Luscombe, who had been engaged a short time before the Eleventh Report was drawn up, was obliged to leave very soon afterwards on account of illness, and that there was some difficulty in supplying his place, there being a great demand for labourers at Torquay. At the beginning of September, however, they engaged a young man named William Matthews, who has given complete satisfaction, and is still at work in the Cavern.

The Superintendents have had the pleasure, as in former years, of conducting a large number of persons into the Cavern, of explaining to them on the spot the mode of working, and describing the facts which have been discovered, as well as of setting forth their bearing on Paleontology and Anthropology. The following may be mentioned as amongst the visitors since the Eleventh Report was presented:-Lord Erskine, Hon. J. C. Erskine, Sir J. L. Duntze, Sir L. Palk, Sir J. Walrond, Colonel Bridges, Colonel Buckle (Bangalore), Major Lang, Captain F. G. D. Watson, the Revds. Chancellor Benson, T. Hincks, W. R. Stevenson, and R. R. Wolfe, Dr. Boycott, Professors

1876.

* See Report Brit. Assoc. 1875, pp. 1-13.

B

H. E. Roscoe and W. C. Williamson, and Messrs. A. S. Bicknell, G. E. Bicknell, H. C. Browne, J. L. Budgett, T. Budgett, G. Cheney, A. H. Clerk, E. Conway, W. W. Crowfoot, C. D. Engelhart (Stockholm), A. E. Fletcher, W. Francis, H. Green, C. Hart, H. Hayes, P. Hickson, S. J. Hickson, T. A. Hickson, E. Howard, A. D. Jessup (U. S. A.), A. J. Jones, E. C. Lang, C. J. Lilly, C. Pannel, G. Pycroft, N. F. Roberts, E. G. Stone, E. C. Tancock, R. H. Tiddeman, W. A. Trail, F. F. Tuckett, A. M. Turnbull (Natal), P. S. Wilkinson, R. W. Williamson, J. E. Wolfe, G. Wollen, and a large number of ladies. The Cavern has also been visited by numerous persons who have been attended by the "Guide," i. e. the foreman of the work, under arrangements laid down by the Superintendents.

The Great Oven.-Your Committee stated last year that on the 27th of July, 1875 (five days before their Eleventh Report was drawn up), they began the exploration of the small passage or tunnel known as "The Great Oven,” which connects with one another "The Cave of Inscriptions" and "The Bear's Den," the two remotest chambers of the Cavern. The Great Oven may be said to consist of three Reaches, the Eastern, Central, and Western, all of them, and especially the Central, being very contracted in height and width. The Western Reach (the only one which has been explored) extends tortuously, from its commencement in the south-west corner of the Cave of Inscriptions towards E.S.E., for a distance of 58 feet, where it is succeeded by the Central Reach, and throws off two branches, one in a northerly and the other in a southerly direction. At its mouth, or junction with the Cave of Inscriptions, it is 8 feet high from the limestone roof to the bottom of the usual four-feet excavation made by the Committee. Its width is commonly about 4 feet; but at one point it contracts to 3 feet, and at another expands to 7 feet. Throughout its entire length, and especially at and near the entrance, the roof and walls have the aspect of a well-worn watercourse. A few small lateral ramifications open out of the walls, almost all of them being quite empty and well worn by the action of flowing water. How far they extend cannot be determined, as they are too narrow for investigation.

In the Western Reach of the Great Oven there was no continuous Floor of Stalagmite, though here and there portions of such a floor, perhaps never continuous, adhered to and projected from the walls; and pieces of stalagmite, as well as detached "Paps" of the same material, occurred in the deposit below. There was no reason to suppose that earlier explorers had ever worked in this branch of the Cavern.

As in the adjacent chambers and galleries, the deposits consisted of a thin layer of "Cave-earth" above, and "Breccia" below; and throughout the Reach the one lay immediately on the other, without any intermediate Crystalline Stalagmite, such as occurs in typical sections. At the entrance, and up to 34 feet from it, the usual four-feet sections failed to reach the bottom of the Breccia, so that its depth is undetermined; but at the point just named, the limestone floor was found at a depth of 3.5 feet below the upper surface of the Cave-earth; and thence to the inner end of the Reach the floor was found everywhere at a depth of 4 feet at most, and frequently at but little more than 2 feet, thus displaying a continuous Limestone Floor for a length of 24 feet a fact without a parallel in the history of the exploration. At the innermost end the height of the Reach was 8.5 feet, from Limestone Roof to Limestone Floor. The upper surface of the Cave-earth was an irregularly inclined plane, ascending 8 feet from the entrance inwards, or rising at a mean gradient of about 1 in 7; whilst the Limestone Floor was inclined in the same direction at a higher mean gradient and with still greater irregularity.

The discoveries in this branch of the Cavern were neither numerous nor important. The total number of "finds," including the few mentioned in the Eleventh Report, amounted to 50. The remains found in the Cave-earth included 2 teeth of Hyæna, 6 of Bear, 10 of Ox, 1 plate of a small molar of Mammoth, several bones and pieces of bone, including an astragalus of Horse, a few coprolites of Hyæna, a portion of a flint flake (No. 6672), and a flint chip (No. 6661).

The flint flake (No. 6672) is of a pretty uniform cream-colour, almost a parallelogram in outline, 1-4 inch long, 7 inch broad, abruptly terminated at each end, one of which retains the original surface of the nodule from which it was struck, and 3 inch in greatest thickness, which it attains near the butt end. The inner face is slightly concave; the outer is very convex, and consists of three planes or facets, the central one commencing near the butt end, whilst those on each side of it extend the entire length of the fiake. Its ridges and (excepting a very few small notches) its lateral edges are quite sharp, and show that it can have had little or no wear and tear in any way, and that in all probability it reached the spot in which it was found, not by the transporting action of water, but by human agency; in short, that man intentionally took it to, or accidentally left it in, one of the branches of the Cavern most remote from the known external entrances. It occurred with chips of bone, within a foot of the upper surface of the Cave-carth, 40 feet from the mouth of the Great Oven, on 13th October, 1875.

The specimens found in the Breccia were 8 teeth of Bear and a few bones, none of which call for special description.

Besides the foregoing, there were 2 teeth of Bear and some bones and pieces of bone found at and near the junction of the two deposits, where, there being no separating stalagmite, it was not always easy to determine whether they belonged to the Cave-earth or to the Breccia, without trusting entirely to the mineral characters of the specimens themselves.

The Central or most contracted Reach, that from which the Great Oven more especially takes its name, is a perfectly empty tunnel, of elliptical transverse section, about 2.75 feet high and 3-25 feet wide, with roof and walls and floor so strikingly smooth as to denote a well-worn and completely filled watercourse, extending through the limestone in an easterly direction for a distance of 20 feet, where it is succeeded by the Eastern Reach, which finally terminates in the Bear's Den, whence its exploration can alone be undertaken.

The two branches which the Western Reach throws off at its inner end, one on each side of the Central Reach, are filled with deposits from roof to floor; but as they are, at least at their entrances, very contracted in both height and breadth, as the deposits they contain form a most intractable concrete, and as the specimens found in their vicinity were comparatively few and unimportant, the Superintendents closed their attempts to explore them, at least for the present, and left the Great Oven on 27th October, 1875, having spent about three months on it.

99 66

The Labyrinth.-Three branches of the Cavern, known as "The Charcoal Cave," Underhay's Gallery," and "The Labyrinth," open out of the left or eastern wall of "The Long Arcade," described in previous Reports *. The first two have been explored and reported on t; but the Committee had undertaken no researches in the Labyrinth, the innermost and most important * See Reports Brit. Assoc. 1872, pp. 44-47; 1873, pp. 198-209; and 1874, pp. 3-6. + Ibid. 1872, pp. 38-44; and 1874, pp. 6-9.

of them, when the Eleventh Report was presented. When Mr. MacEnery and his contemporaries commenced their labours in the Cavern, the existence of this chamber was probably known to but very few persons, as what appeared to be its two entrances must have been so nearly filled with deposits of different kinds as to reduce them to the size of mere pigeon-holes; and it is perhaps worthy of remark, by way of confirmation, that though it contained large and lofty bosses of stalagmite, such as visitors loved to enrich with their names or initials, the only inscription found in it is dated many years after the commencement of Mr. MacEnery's researches.

The entrance to the Labyrinth is about 190 feet from the mouth of the Long Arcade, and 280 feet from the nearest external entrance to the Cavern. The name of Labyrinth was given to it on account of the difficulty which, without a guide, visitors experienced in threading their way between the numerous masses of fallen limestone and the large bosses of stalagmite which occupied its floor. In fact it was not only the most bewildering branch of the Cavern, but even persons somewhat familiar with the scene so constantly "lost their bearings as to be unable, even after emerging from it, to tell whether their way out of the Cavern lay to the right hand or to the left. "There was," says Mr. MacEnery, "a tradition of the loss of life here by a young man who ventured to explore it without a guide. It is certain that two gentlemen who lost their light and way spent a night of horror here, dreading to advance for fear of falling into the pits .. they remained immovable until their friends came to their relief, alarmed by their absence"*.

In another passage, speaking of the Labyrinth as "The Zigzag Route," he says, "Of the dangerous intricacies of this section of the Cavern a memorable and nearly fatal illustration occurred during the American War. Some officers of the fleet then stationed in Torbay had the hardihood to attempt to explore it without a guide. Having lost their clue, they wandered about in the vain hope of retracing their steps, during which their torches were burnt out. They then groped about in different directions and separated. After a night of horror they were released by their friends, who, alarmed at their absence, recollected the projected adventure and hastened to their deliverance" +.

The Labyrinth extends from the Long Arcade, in a south-easterly direction, for about 46 feet, throwing off three narrow branches at and near its inner end. Of these, the central one, opening out of the south-eastern corner, and which it is proposed to call " Matthews's Passage," after one of the workmen, leads into the Bear's Den; another, the mouth of which is immediately adjacent and opens out of the north-eastern wall, has long been famous as "The Little Oven," and has its other end on the mass of limestone known as "The Bridge", at a distance of upwards of 60 feet towards the north; whilst the third, commencing in the southernmost corner, extends for a distance of at least from 15 to 20 feet towards the south-west. The Labyrinth is commonly from 17 to 18 feet wide, but expands at one point to 22 feet, and contracts at another to 15 feet; its greatest height is 18 feet, measured from the bottom of the excavation.

The walls and roof, though by no means without traces of the erosive action of flowing water, are in most places extremely rugged, and suggest by their fretted aspect that even the last of the numerous blocks of limestone encumbering its floor must have fallen a long time ago.

*See Trans. Devon. Assoc. vol. iii. (1869), p. 238.
p. 460.

+ Ibid.

See Report Brit. Assoc. 1873, p. 199.

It is separated from the Long Arcade by a massive curtain of limestone, descending from the roof to the depth of 9 feet, across a space about 18 feet wide, being, so to speak, slightly looped up at each end to form two small entrances. Observers unaccustomed to caverns are not unlikely to speculate on the cause which prevents the fall of this mass, and to hasten on lest the time before the event occurs may be undesirably brief.

Mr. MacEnery had conducted some diggings in the Labyrinth, and had carried them to a depth of at least three feet at one of the entrances, so that by assuming a stooping posture ingress and egress became possible. In all other parts of the chamber his work was much less deep, and, on account of the state of the floor, was necessarily discontinuous.

Omitting the large blocks of limestone, the deposits were :-First, or uppermost, a Floor of Granular Stalagmite, from which there arose several huge bosses also of Stalagmite, one of which was 11 feet high above the floor, whilst its base occupied a rudely circular space fully 15 feet in mean diameter.

Second, a layer of Cave-earth, rarely amounting to more than a foot in depth, and sometimes to not more than a few inches, whilst it occasionally reached as much as 2 feet.

Third. Though it may be doubted whether there ever was a Floor of the more ancient, the Crystalline, Stalagmite in the Labyrinth, the lower, and by far the greater, part of the bosses mentioned above was of that variety, and was covered with a comparatively thin envelope of the Granular kind, without any mechanical deposit between them.

Fourth, the Breccia, or, so far as is known, the most ancient of the Cavern deposits, lay immediately beneath the Cave-earth, from which there was nothing to separate it, and extended to a depth exceeding that to which the excavations were carried.

In looking at the facts as they presented themselves, day after day, the following appears to be not improbably the history of the deposits in this branch of the Cavern.

During, as well as after, the deposition of the Breccia, with its ursine relics, stalagmite, having now a crystalline texture, was in course of precipitation, and in such a way as to form, not sheets or floors, but bosses of a more or less conical form, which, whilst they rested on Breccia, had their lower slopes covered with the same material, so that their bases were deeply buried in that ancient deposit. After the close of the era of the Breccia, the precipitation was still carried on, but, as before, in such a way as to add to the volume of the bosses, and not to produce a floor. Then came the deposition of the Cave-earth, containing remains of Bear, Lion, Fox, Hyæna, Mammoth, Rhinoceros, Horse, Ox, and Bird-all of them, with the exception of the first three, unknown to the Breccia. Later still was the precipitation of that stalagmite which is granular instead of crystalline, and which not only added to the dimensions of the already massive bosses, but flowed out in sheets and covered the Cave-earth. Whilst all these successive operations were in progress, blocks of limestone from time to time fell from the roof-some of them being buried in the Breccia at depths the excavators have not reached, some lying loose on the Floor of Granular Stalagmite, and others occupying all intermediate zones and representing all the intervening periods.

In order to achieve the thorough exploration of the Labyrinth, it was necessary to break up all the bosses of stalagmite with the exception of the largest of them, of which a portion has been left intact, it being believed that it shows strikingly the utter inadequacy of the data derived from a boss to solve the problem of the amount of time represented by a floor, and vice versá.