Fig. 82.—Left Lower Jaw of Glutton, Plas Heaton Cave.
A third cave in the neighbourhood at Plas Heaton, explored in 1870 by Mr. Heaton and Prof. Hughes, furnished the remains of the cave-bear, spotted hyæna, bison, and reindeer, and a remarkably fine specimen of the lower jaw of a glutton ([Fig. 82]), which I have described in the “Geological Journal” (vol. xxvii. p. 406). In a fourth cave, at Gallfaenan, the bear and reindeer were discovered. It is evident from the presence of numerous bones gnawed by hyænas in these caves, that the valleys of the Clwyd and the Elwy were the favourite haunts of that animal in the pleistocene age.
Caves of South Wales in the counties of Glamorgan and Caermarthen.
The earliest cavern explored in South Wales is that of Crawley Rocks,[185] Oxwich Bay, about twelve miles from Swansea. It was discovered in quarrying the mountain limestone in 1792, and contained the remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, stag, and hyæna. It was completely destroyed before Dr. Buckland identified these animals in the collection of Miss Talbot of Penrice Castle.[186]
The line of cliffs, bounding the rocky peninsula of Gower, contains the cave of Paviland, described in the [seventh] chapter ([p. 232]), as well as the group explored by Colonel Wood of Start Hall, from the year 1848[187] to the present time, Bacon Hole, Minchin Hole, Bosco’s Den, Devil’s Hole, Crow Hole, Raven’s Cliff, Spritsail Tor, and Long Hole, which are described by the late Dr. Falconer. The Rhinoceros hemitœchus was met with in comparative abundance, and in association with the woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and E. antiquus. In Bosco’s Den there were no less than 750 shed antlers of reindeer; and in Long Hole, many flint-flakes were discovered in 1860 underneath the stalagmite, and in association with the extinct mammalia, which prove, as Dr. Falconer points out, that man inhabited that district in the pleistocene age.
These caves and fissures were at all levels in the cliff, and in some the bottoms were covered with a stratum of marine sand with sea shells, which showed that they had been washed by the sea before they had been filled by the ossiferous débris. Most of them had probably been filled by streams in the same manner as Gailenreuth and Wirksworth. They abound on the coast merely because a clear section has been worn by the waves. A straight cut through the rocks in any part of the district would probably show them to occur in equal abundance inland.
Caves in Pembrokeshire.
The patches of limestone on the opposite side of Caermarthen Bay, in the neighbourhood of Tenby, also contain ossiferous caverns. The Rev. G. N. Smith,[188] of Gumfriston, has made a fine collection of bones and teeth of mammoth and hyæna, from a fissure in the Blackrock Quarry, close to Tenby, from a fissure in the cliff on Caldy Island, and from the Coygan cave in an outlier of limestone, near Pendine, and has discovered flakes of flint and of a peculiar hornstone in the “tunnel cave” termed the Hoyle, underneath stalagmite, in a stratum containing bones of the bear and reindeer. With the exception of the fissure in the Blackrock Quarry none of these have been fully explored. On a visit to Tenby, in 1872, I obtained many flint flakes, and bones broken by man, from the breccia in the Hoyle; and from a fissure on Caldy Island, numerous bones and teeth of young wolves, which represented a whole litter, and two metatarsals of bison, cemented together into a compact mass.
The discovery of mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, Irish elk, bison, wolf, lion, and bear, on so small an island as Caldy, indicates that a considerable change has taken place in the relation of the land to the sea in that district since those animals were alive. It would have been impossible for so many and so large animals to have obtained food on so small an island. It may therefore be reasonably concluded that, when they perished in the fissures, Caldy was not an island, but a precipitous hill, overlooking the broad valley now covered by the waters of the Bristol Channel, but then affording abundant pasture. The same inference may also be drawn from the vast numbers of animals found in the Gower caves, which could not have been supported by the scant herbage of the limestone hills of that district. We must, therefore, picture to ourselves a fertile plain occupying the whole of the Bristol Channel, and supporting herds of reindeer, horses, and bisons, many elephants and rhinoceroses, and now and then being traversed by a stray hippopotamus, which would afford abundant prey to the lions, bears, and hyænas inhabiting all the accessible caves, as well as to their great enemy and destroyer man. We shall see in the [ninth] chapter that the elevation of the whole district above its present level is part of the general elevation of north-western Europe, and no mere small or local phenomenon.