258 REPORT ON THE DENEHOLE EXPLORATION
of the pile of sand beneath the shaft, it was therefore of later
date than the pile of sand. The bones themselves do not exhibit
any peculiarities which would serve to distinguish them from
those of an ordinary European. The femur is of moderate size,
but too much broken to allow measurements being made; and
the tibia does not present the flattening which has been noticed
in certain ancient skeletons. The equine remains are of two
sizes, and the smaller may possibly have belonged to a donkey.
There is no reason for supposing that the ox bones are other
than those of the domestic ox; the only skull found is very
imperfect, and the limb bones do not seem to be small enough for
the Bos longifrons. The bones of two or three sheep have been
obtained, and these indicate rather small, although adult, animals.
One skeleton nearly perfect had well developed horns. The bones
of dogs are very numerous and vary much in size. As it is by no
means uncommon for dogs to fall down these shafts nowadays, one
is not surprised that in times gone by they were frequent victims of
these excellent though dangerous "pitfalls." The bones of rabbits, as
might be expected, are more numerous than those of any other animal.
All the species which have yet been found in the deneholes are such
as now inhabit the neighbourhood, and therefore give no indication
of the age of these remarkable excavations.
It is somewhat strange that up to the present time the deneholes
have yielded no remains which indicate any great antiquity;
indeed, all those characteristic forms which are usually met with
in prehistoric deposits are conspicuous by their absence. Even
if the Bos primigenius, Irish elk, and reindeer, were extinct in
this region before the deneholes were made (or at least before
they were abandoned) one would expect to find the remains
of brown bear, wolf, Bos longifrons, roe deer, or red deer. The
wolf, we know, existed in some abundance in this country at
the time of the Norman Conquest, and was not exterminated for
some two or three centuries afterwards. It is just possible that some
of the canine remains which have been found may belong to wolves,
but we have no definite evidence that such is the case. The Bos
longifrons, red deer and roe deer are very generally found associated
with Roman remains, but not even these have yet been found. The
brown bear certainly lingered on in this country into the historic
period, and one would expect to find his remains in some of these
"pitfalls" if it still existed in the neighbourhood at the time when