The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-21 00:00:00

Thor's Cave.

This magnificent cave has its opening in the face of a
limestone cliff, at the height of about 250 feet above the
level of the river Manifold, and there is no more picturesque
view in the Midland counties than that which is presented
to the traveller on the Wetter" and Butterton road, when
looking across a ravine he sees the towering and almost
perpendicular cliff perforated by the
gigantic portal of the
cave, some 30 feet high, with the alder-fringed Manifold
winding at the foot along one of the sweetest dells in Staf-
fordshire, the landscape terminated by Grindon-hill and the
graceful spire of Grinder' church. The cave itself repays
the trouble of a rather toilsome ascent. Its lofty roof, formed
of rude cathedral-like pointed and groined arches, opening
out into several passages or aisles,
is majestic in the extreme.
It is therefore not to be wondered at that several attempts
should have been made to ascertain the archreelogioal trea-
sures that might reasonably be supposed to be contained on
the floor of the cave, but all researches until the present time
have proved fruitless. Impressed by the favourable position
of the cavern, its main entrance facing almost due north, Mr.
Edwin Brown, of Burton-upon-Trent, had long been under
the impression that there was a great probability of discover-
ing
in the mud of the cave both bones and teeth of some of
those exinct animals which inhabited this country during
the glacial epoch, the northerly
or, currents of which period
conveyed the mud into the cave;
failing geological dis-
coveries, that there might be found traces (df the ancient
tribes of the human race having inhabited the precincts of
the cave, which traces had escaped the partial attempts of
previous explorers to detect. To the end that an effi-
cient search should be made, a small grant of money was
lately obtained from the Midland Scientific Association ;
the permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire was
asked and freely granted, and the invaluable services of Mr
S. Carrington, of Wetton, as superintendent of the works,
were enlisted. Operations were commenced systematically
a few y
beymlpayloeyr,edencda, after submitting
it to the practised eye of Mr Carrington, to throw it
through a cleft of the rock down the western declivityrefully to remove
theflodoaros aroe.
cave Menlayer were
fh
of the hill. Many hours had not elapsed before articles
of Celtic manufacture presented themselves. The cave
had evidently been occupied at various times and for
long periods by the wild tribes of our island, who, levelling
spaces in the floor in some out-of-the-way nook of the
cavern, made their fires and carried on all the opera-
tions of ordinary lire. Layers of charcoal, burnt to the state
of soot, were found more than a foot in thickness, together
with numerous fragments of pottery of the Celtic and Re_
mane-Celtic periods, and bones of animals that had been used
as food. In one place, near Ure stone known as the "Druids'
altar," and about 6 feet from the surface, an ancient inter-
ment was discovered. The skeleton was placed in the con-
tracted form common to the most rncient burials, but being
unprotected by any eist, the bones were much crushed. It
was accompanied by a bone instrument,
made apparently
from the brow antler of the red deer, perforated in two
different directions, and with a hole also at the base.
Probably it had been used with strings as a fastening
to the skin cloak of the deceased, but as no similar
article has ever been discovered in the many barrows
that have been opened by Mr. Carrington, or by the late
Mr. Bateman and others, in Staffordshire or Derbyshire,
the use is at present 'problematical. It is a singular oir-
cumstance that several other similar articles were found in
different parts of the cave. The collection of antiquities
80 far brought to light—comprises bones carved in seve-
ral peculiar ways, fragments of gritstone querns, an
armilla and a fine fibula of the harp pattern, both of
bronze, several bronze articles of very peculiar construc-
tion—more or less highly ornamented and of which the
uses cannot at present be even guessed ; whetstones of two
kinds—one of them perforated to suspend to the dress;
a stone curiously shaped and pierced, possibly used to
attach to a fishing-net; iron knives of ancient pattern;
also a spear head, an arrow head, and an adze of unusual
shape, all of iron ; a large Y-shaped piece of iron, use un-
known, and other articiee too numerous or too obscure to
be catalogued. The discovery cannot fail to be of great
interest to all who have studied the history of our barba-
rous British tribes. It is, however, singular, that so far no
discovery has been made of flint instruments, nor of belles
of extinct animals, but the researches which are being con-
tinued may yet bring both to light, as the operations now
in progress promise the discovery shortly Of the passage by
which the cavern is continued into the heart of the hill.

DEATH OF A POACHER FROM THE ALLEGED
VIOLINCE or THE FOLICE.—An inquest was held on Mon.
day afternoon at Southall County House of Correction,
Notts, on the body of an old man named Skidmore, who
had died whilst undergoing a term of three months' impri-
sonment for night poaching in the parish of Blidworth on
the Ist inst. It was suggested that his death might have
been caused by the severe beating that he had received when
captured, but the inquiry was adjourned.
A FEMALE REPORTER,.—A good-looking young
lady, dressed in black, appeared among the press gang at
the Chicago Convention as correspondent for a Philadelphia
paper. She wrote nimbly away until she had filled two or
three large pages,
and after the adjournment hurried off to
the telegraph office to fond special deipttitchea,—,lYew York
Paper ,