In the month of June last the cave was thoroughly explored for the Ayrshire and Wigtownshire Archæological Association, under the superintendence of Sir Herbert Maxwell, M.P., and Mr Cochran-Patrick, M.P., Secretary of the Association and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. They found that the whole floor of the cave had been regularly paved; and close to the entrance, but outside the external wall which converted the cave into a chapel, there was a large stone basin placed under a natural drip from the rock, which may have served as a holy-water vessel. A number of additional crosses were also discovered. On a stone which had been placed as one of the steps leading down to the paved floor there were four crosses in a line. On one of the stones of the pavement was an inscription in Roman letters, of which the word SANCTI could only be deciphered. Underneath the pavement and throughout the debris of the cave-floor there was a considerable accumulation of shells, consisting chiefly of limpets and periwinkles, mingled with splintered bones, evidently the refuse of the food of some earlier occupants. At a considerable depth immediately outside the wall of the chapel, the decayed remnants of a human skeleton were disentombed. Whether these were the bones of a hermit of the chapel who had chosen to be buried in the spot where he had ended his solitary life, or the remains of some victim of violence placed there for concealment, will probably remain unknown. St Ninian, to whom the cave was dedicated, was the first who preached Christianity among the southern Picts. His life and labours are briefly related by the Venerable Bede, and more fully by Ailred, a Cistercian monk of Rievaux, in Yorkshire. Ailred, whose _Life of St Ninian_ was written in the second half of the twelfth century, states that he derived his materials from a certain barbarously written manuscript, presumably of much earlier date. He informs us that Ninian was born at Whithorn—then called Rosnat—and that he was the son of a Christian Prince. Having received his education under the care of St Martin of Tours, he subsequently went to Rome, where he remained till he was made a bishop and sent to evangelise the people of his native province. From St Martin he obtained masons to build a stone church in Galloway after the Roman fashion. As this was the first stone church erected in Scotland, the fame of Ninian’s _Candida Casa_ or White House has been perpetuated in the Saxon form of Whitherne or Whithorn. The date of its erection is fixed by the fact that St Martin died in 397 A.D.; and St Ninian, having heard of his death while the church was being built, resolved to dedicate the finished edifice to his memory. Ninian himself, after a life full of labours, was buried in the church of St Martin which he had built; and Ailred mentions the stone sarcophagus which contained his remains as still existing in his day, and much venerated in consequence of the many miraculous cures