We owe the exploration of the neighbouring caves of Banwell, Sandford Hill, Bleadon, Goat’s Hole, in Burrington Combe, and Uphill,[192] to the joint labours of the two above-mentioned gentlemen, extending over the period which elapsed between 1821 and 1860. The vast quantity of remains which they obtained can only be realized by a visit to the Museum of the Somerset Archæological and Natural History Society, at Taunton.[193] They belong to the same species as those already mentioned from the caves of South Wales. The fauna of the Mendip is, however, characterized by the great number of lions, and by a few fragments of the glutton. Of the former animal, Mr. Ayshford Sanford and myself have met with sufficient remains to figure nearly every portion of the skeleton, and the skulls prove that it was not a tiger, as it is considered to be by some naturalists, but a true lion, differing in no respect, except in its large size, from those now living in Asia and Africa. All these caverns consist of chambers at various levels more or less connected with fissures, and, from the perfect condition of the bones they must have been inaccessible to the bone-destroying hyæna. Their contents were introduced, as is suggested by Dr. Buckland, from the surface by streams falling into swallow-holes (see Fig. 81), which have now, under the changed physical conditions, ceased to flow. The extraordinary quantity of remains preserved in one cave may be, to some extent, verified by a visit to that at Banwell. It consists of two large chambers, the upper one filled with thousands of bones of bison, horse, and reindeer, taken out of the red silt which originally filled it to the roof; the lower one full of the undisturbed contents, from which the bones project in the wildest confusion. This accumulation has been introduced by water, through a vertical fissure which opened on the surface. It is evident, from the very nearly perfect skulls of wolf and bear which were discovered, that the cave was not used as a den by the hyænas. They are, however, proved to have been living close by at the time, since their skulls, and the gnawed antlers of reindeer, have been discovered inside. They were probably swept in by the stream along with the other bones. _The Uphill Cave._