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

BOROUGII HOP.

The supply of hops on sale is moderate. For good and
fine samples there is a steady demand at very full prices ;
otherwise the trade is quiet.

WHITECHAPEL.

The supply of meat on sale is moderate, and trade rules
firm, as follows :

Beef, from 28 10d to 48 4d; mutton, 3s Sd to 4s 8d
veal, 33 Sd to ; and pork, 33 Cdto Is 61 per Sibs h,
the carcase.

Thor's Cave.

This magnificent cave has its opening in the face of a
mestono cliff, at the height of about 250 feet above the
Level of the river Manifold, and there is no more picturesque
vitw in the Midland counties than that which is presented
to the traveller on the Wetton 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 ono of the sweetest dells in Staf-
fordshire, the landscape terminated by Grindon-hill and the
graceful spire of Griadon 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 arehmological 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, bad 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 extinct animals which inhabited this country during 1
the glacial epoch, the northerly currents of which period
conveyed the mud into the cave ; or, failing geological dis-
coveries, that there might be found traces of 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 days ago, Men were employed carefully to remove
the floor of the cave layer by layer, and, after submitting
it to the practised eye of Mr Carrington, to throw it
through a cleft of the rock down the western declivity
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 oarried on all the opera-
tions of ordinary life. 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 Ro-
mano-Celtic periods, and bones of animals that had been used
as food. In one place, near the stone known as the " Druids'
altar," and about 5 feet from the surface, an ancient inter-
ment was discovered. The skeleton was placed in the con-
tracted form common to the most ancient burials, but being
unprotected by any met, the bones were much crushed. It
was accompanied by a bone instrument, mau
apparently
from the brow antler of the red deer, perforated in two
different directions, and with a hole also at the base.
Probablyto the it had
cloak
been
of used
the with
deceased, but as no similar
article has ever been discovered in the many barrows
skin
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
fragments of gritstone querns, an
cir-
cumstance that several other similar articles were found in
fibula .of the harp pattern, both of
different parts of the cave. The. collection of antiquities
so far brought to light—comprises bones carved in seve-
ralab rr mo peculiarbronze,
several
and
awaibnrse:Dze
very peculiar construc-
tion—more or less highly ornamented—and of which the
articles cf
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-not; 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, nee un-
known, and ocher articles 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 bc,nei,
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 discoveryinto the heart of the hill.
,ern .••0,....................
_................

D EATOF F
THE A
POLICEFCI I PROM THE ALLEGED
VIOLENCE
quest was held on Mon-
_
day afternoon at Southall County House of Correction,
Notts, on the body of CO old man named Skidmore, who
OF
.ER n
Ain
had died whilst undergoing a term of three months' impri-
sonment for night poaching in the parish of Blidworth on
the let 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 REPORTEE.—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 oil to
the telegraph office to send special despatches.-1 M York
raper.