Reliquiæ Diluvianæ. The seventh and last case that has occurred in this country is that of another discovery recently made on the coast of Glamorganshire, fifteen miles west of Swansea, between Oxwich Bay and the Worms Head, on the property of C. M. Talbot, Esq. It consists of two large caves facing the sea, in the front of a lofty cliff of limestone, which rises more than 100 feet perpendicularly above the mouth of the caves, and below them slopes at an angle of about 40° to the water's , edge, presenting a bluff and rugged shore to the waves, which are very violent along this north coast of the estuary of the Severn. These caves are altogether invisible from the land side, and are accessible only at low water, except by dangerous climbing along the face of a nearly precipitous cliff, composed entirely of compact mountain limestone, which dips north at an angle of about 45°. One of them only (called Goats Hole [Map]) had been noticed when I arrived there, and I shall describe it first, before I proceed to speak of the other. Its existence had been long known to the farmers of the adjacent lands, as well as the fact of its containing large bones, but it had been no farther attended to till last summer, when it was explored by the surgeon and curate of the nearest village, Port Inon, who discovered in it two molar teeth of elephant, and a portion of a large curved tusk, which latter they buried again in the earth, where it remained till it was extracted a second time, on a further examination of the cave in the and of December last by L. W. Dillwyn, Esq. and Miss Talbot, and removed to Penrice Castle, together with a large part of the skull to which it had belonged, and several baskets full of other teeth and bones. On the news of this further discovery being communicated to me, I went immediately from Derbyshire to Wales, and found the position of the cave to be such as I have above described; and its floor at the mouth to be from 30 to 40 feet above high-water mark, so that the waves of the highest storms occasionally dash into it, and have produced three or four deep rock basins in its very threshold, by the rolling on their axis of large stones, which still lie at the bottom of these basins (see Plate XXI. h h.); around their edge, and in the outer part of the cave itself, are strewed a considerable number of sea pebbles, resting on the native limestone rock. The floor of the cave ascends rapidly from its mouth inwards to the furthest extremity (see Plate XXI. and description), so that the pebbles have not been drifted in beyond twenty feet, or about one-third of its whole length; in the remaining two-thirds no disturbance by the waters of the present sea appears ever to have taken place, and within this point at which the pebbles cease, the floor is covered with a mass of diluvial loam of a reddish yellow colour, abundantly mixed with angular fragments of limestone and broken calcareous spar, and interspersed with recent sea-shells, and with teeth and bones of the following animals, viz. elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, wolf, fox, horse, ox, deer of two or three species, water-rats, sheep, birds, and man. I found also fragments of charcoal, and a small flint, the edges of which had been chipped off', as if by striking a light. I subjoin a list of the most remarkable of the animal remains, most of which are preserved in the collection at Penrice Castle, and the Museum at Oxford.

Elephant. Head broken into numerous fragments, the sockets of the tusks being nearly entire, and six inches in diameter, and very long.

One large portion of tusk, nearly two feet long, and five inches and a half in diameter.

One large portion of diseased tusk, and many very small fragments of decayed ivory.

Two molar teeth entire, fragments of two others.

Part of the epiphysis of the humerus.

Large fragments of the ribs.

Splinters of large cylindrical bones of the legs.

Rhinoceros. A tooth resembling the incisor of the upper jaw.

One fragment of upper molar tooth.

One large bone of the carpus.

Two phalangal bones of the toe.

Horse. Many teeth and fragments of bones.

Hog. One upper incisor, apparently modern.

Bear. Many molar teeth, two large canine ditto.

One fragment of lower jaw, and the anterior portion or chin part of two other lower jaws firmly anchelosed, and exhibiting the sockets of the incisor teeth and of both tusks; the latter are more than three inches deep, and equal in size to the largest from the caves of Germany.

One humerus, of the same large size, nearly entire.

Many vertebrae, equally large.

Two ossa calcis, and many large bones of the metacarpus and metatarsus.

Hyaena. Lower extremity of the left humerus.

Fox. Lower extremity of the femur.

Wolf. One lower jaw.

One os calcis.

Several metacarpal bones.

Ox. Many teeth.

Two lumbar vertebrae.

One femur, and many entire bones of the foot, and fragments of larger bones.

Deer. One skull, large as the red deer, but of a different species.

Fragments of various horns, some small, others a little palmated, one approaching to that of the roe.

Many teeth, and fragments of bones.

Bat. One skeleton, nearly entire, of a small water-rat, or

Large field-mouse, probably postdiluvian.

Birds. Single bones of small birds, all recent.

Man. Portion of a female skeleton, clearly postdiluvian.

Fragments of many recent bones of ox and sheep, apparently the remains of human food.

Reliquiæ Diluvianæ. In another part (see Plate XXI.) I discovered beneath a shallow covering of six inches of earth nearly the entire left side of a human female skeleton. The skull and vertebras, and extremities of the right side were wanting; the remaining parts lay extended in the usual position of burial, and in their natural order of contact, and consisted of the humerus, radius, and ulna of the left arm, the hand being wanting; the left leg and foot entire to the extremity of the toes, part of the right foot, the pelvis, and many ribs; in the middle of the bones of the ancle was a small quantity of yellow wax-like substance resembling adipocere. All these bones appeared not to have been disturbed by the previous operations (whatever they were) that had removed the other parts of the skeleton. They were all of them stained superficially with a dark brick-red colour, and enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle, composed of red micaceous oxyde of iron, which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch around the surface of the bones. The body must have been entirely surrounded or covered over at the time of its interment with this red substance. Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn, I found laid together, and surrounded also by ruddle, about two handsfull of small shells of the nerita littoralis in a state of great decay, and falling to dust on the slightest pressure. At another part of the skeleton, viz. in contact with the ribs, I found forty or fifty fragments of small ivory rods nearly cylindrical, and varying in diameter from a quarter to three quarters of an inch, and from one to four inches in length. Their external surface was smooth in a few which were least decayed; but the greater number had undergone the same degree of decomposition with the large fragments of tusk before mentioned; most of them were also split transversely by recent fracture in digging them out, so that there are no means of knowing what was their original length, as I found none in which both extremities were unbroken; many of them also are split longitudinally by the separation of their laminae, which are evidently the laminae of the large tusk, from a portion of which they have been made. The surfaces exposed by this splitting, as well as the outer circumference where it was smooth, were covered with small clusters of minute and extremely delicate dendrites¹; so also was the circumference of some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory, and found with the rods, being nearly of the size and shape of segments of a small teacup handle; the rings when complete were probably four or five inches in diameter. Both rods and rings, as well as the nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones; they had evidently been buried at the same time with the woman. In another place were found three fragments of the same ivory, which had been cut into unmeaning forms by a rough edged instrument, probably a coarse knife, the marks of which remain on all their surfaces. One of these fragments is nearly of the shape and size of a human tongue, and its surface is smooth as if it had been applied to some use in which it became polished; its surface also is covered with dendrites like that of the rods: there was found also a rude instrument, resembling a short skewer or chop-stick, and made of the metacarpal bone of a wolf, sharp and flattened to an edge at one end, and terminated at the other by the natural rounded condyle of the bone, which the person who cut it had probably extracted, as well as the ivory tusk, from the diluvial detritus within the cave. No metallic instruments have as yet been discovered amongst these remains, which, though clearly not coeval with the antediluvian bones of the extinct species, appear to have lain there many centuries.

Note 1. A superficial stain of oxyde of iron, assuming the form of branches of trees, or extremely delicate moss; hut almost invisibly minute.