found, including two dolichocephalic skulls, thus indicating that the final purpose of the cave was a burial-place; and (2) a food refuse-heap comprised of shells of various kinds and the remains of animals, partly superimposed on, and partly intercalated with, sea gravel. It would appear that during a storm, subsequent to the time when the cave had become a place of resort to man, the waves were forced into the cave, carrying with them a certain amount of shingle, which, after the abatement of the storm, had become the habitable floor of the cave, and over which the cave-dwellers again took up their abode.
If this deduction be correct, the importance of the Oban discovery cannot be over-rated, as it proves that man was an inhabitant of the district when the entrance to the cave was on the sea-beach, and sufficiently near the water to permit of the waves to enter it during a storm. The beach of to-day is, however, a hundred yards distant, and the lower shell-bed lay fully thirty feet above present high-water mark; so that a change in the relative level of Sea and land must have taken place in that part of Scotland to the extent of some twenty-five or thirty feet, since the troglodyte hunters of Oban feasted on the marine and land animals of the district. These it may be observed were unquestionably Neolithic in character.
All the implements recovered from the débris in the cave were made of bone or deer-horn, with the exception of three hammer-
