this old river-bed overlying the thick stalagmite, beneath which the human relics were sealed up.
Fig. 413a.—Robin Hood Cave. 12
Since this book first appeared several important and interesting discoveries have been made in British Caves between Chesterfield and Worksop. Perhaps the most remarkable are those made in Creswell Crags on the north-eastern border of Derbyshire, by the Rev. J. Magens Mello,[1] and Prof. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S.,[2] who commenced their labours in the year 1875. The ossiferous deposits, in which also traces of man were found, lay both in fissures and in caves in the Lower Magnesian Limestone. Those which yielded the most important stone implements were the Robin Hood and the Church Hole Caves, though Mother Grundy's Parlour also contributed a few. In the Robin Hood Cave a stalagmitic breccia lay above the cave-earth. In this were found implements of quartzite and ironstone, eighty-six in number, ruder than those of flint in the breccia. By the kindness of the Council of the Geological Society I am able to give a few representations of those of both classes. Fig. 413a shows an implement formed from a quartzite pebble worked at the point and side and of a distinctly Palæolithic type. It is much like the specimen from Saltley, Fig. 450a, and some made of similar material found in the neighbourhood of Toulouse.
Fig. 413b is of iron-stone, and so far as form is concerned might well have been found in a bed of old River-drift. Some hammer-stones and a side chopper of quartzite, in form like Fig. 443, were also found in the cave-earth. Some flint tools from the breccia are shown in the next three figures. Fig. 413c recalls one of the blades from Kent's Cavern, Fig. 390, though of
- ↑ Q.J.G.S., vol. xxxi. p. 679; xxxii. p. 240; xxxiii. p. 579; xxxv. p. 724.
- ↑ "Early Man in Brit.," p. 175. See also Pennington's "Barrows, and Bone Caves of Derbyshire," p. 99. Journ. Derb. A. and N. H. Soc., vol. iv. (1882), p. 169.
