The Dream-cave, near Wirksworth,[182] in Derbyshire, contrasts with that of Kirkdale in the perfect state of the bones which it contains. It was discovered in 1822, in following a vein of lead ([Fig. 81]). The miners suddenly broke into a hollow, c, filled with red earth and stones, and as they continued their shaft downwards the sides continually closed upon them until the roof of a cave was revealed. A nearly perfect skeleton of the rhinoceros was discovered in the earth, as well as bones of the horse, reindeer, and urus. After a large quantity of the earth had been removed, the surface soil, i, at a little distance began to sink, and ultimately a vertical shaft was found to connect the cave with the surface. Into this the animals had fallen, just as at the present time sheep and oxen frequently perish in similar natural pitfalls in the limestone strata.
Fig. 81.—The Dream-cave, Wirksworth. (Buckland.)
| A | Shaft following lead-vein. |
| B | Supposed continuation of lead-vein. |
| C | Cave. |
| D | Swallow-hole. |
| E | Ossiferous loam. |
| F | Antler of deer. |
| G | Rhinoceros. |
| H | Limestone. |
| I | Natural entrance. |
Other caves and fissures in Derbyshire have yielded remains of the extinct animals: those of Balleye, near Wirksworth, and of Doveholes, near Chaple-en-le-Frith, the mammoth, and a small cave in Hartle Dale, near Castleton, explored by Mr. Pennington and myself in 1872, the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros.
The Caves of North Wales, near St. Asaph.
The ossiferous caves and fissures at Cefn, near St. Asaph, in the mountain limestone that forms the south side of the Vale of Clwyd, were first described in 1833,[183] by the Rev. Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, who explored that which Mr. E. Lloyd had discovered about half-way down the vertical cliff, in the grounds of Cefn Hall. It consists of a narrow passage, turning on itself, and communicating with the surface of the cliff by two entrances, which were completely blocked up with red silt, containing a vast quantity of bones in very bad preservation. The bottom has not yet been reached. In one portion I found, in 1872, a deposit of comminuted bone with scarcely any mixture of loam, that rose in clouds of dust as it was disturbed. The animals belonged to the same class as those of Germany, the cave-bear, spotted hyæna, and reindeer, as well as the hippopotamus, Elephas antiquus and Rhinoceros hemitœchus of the Kirkdale cave. Pebbles derived from the boulder clay, and rounded waterworn fragments of bone, showed that the contents had been introduced into this cave by a stream. Some of the remains, which were marked with teeth, may have been introduced by the hyænas. The flint-flakes found with the human skull and cut antlers of stag, already referred to in the [fifth] chapter, were discovered in the lower entrance.
The same group of animals has been obtained by Mrs. Williams Wynn, the Rev. D. R. Thomas, and myself out of a horizontal cave at the head of the defile leading down from Cefn to Pont Newydd, in which the remains are embedded in a stiff clay, consisting of rearranged boulder clay, and are in the condition of waterworn pebbles. From it I have identified the brown, grizzly, and cave-bear. A further examination by the Rev. D. R. Thomas, and Prof. Hughes, has recently resulted in the discovery of rude implements of felstone, and a tooth which has been identified by Prof. Busk as a human molar of unusual size.[184]
