Chapter VIII (2)

The section made in cutting this passage presented irregular layers of peroxide of manganese, full of bony splinters, and each more or less covered by a layer of bones in various stages of decay. These layers were absent from the upper portion of the passage. There were masses of prisms of calc-spar scattered confusedly through the matrix. After excavating the vertical branch as far as we dared (for the large stones in it made the task dangerous), we were compelled to leave off, having penetrated altogether only thirty-four feet from the entrance. No flint implements rewarded our search this year. Teeth were far more numerous than bones, probably because they are more durable as well as because of their rejection by the hyænas. One jaw was bitten in two, and the fragments found about a foot apart in the undisturbed matrix, just as they had been dropped from the mouth of the hyæna.

In the spring of 1862 Mr. Parker, Mr. Willett, and myself resolved to verify the association of articles of man’s handiwork along with the extinct mammalia, by cleaning out the cave, which was courteously placed at our disposal by the owner, Mr. Hodgekinson.

Our first task was to clear the contents out of the portion of the cave nearest the mouth, or the antrum (Fig. 83, A), and as we excavated onwards many traces of the presence of man were met with. A wide area on the left-hand side (_b_), where the roof and floor of the cave gradually met together, furnished innumerable fragments of charcoal, and many flint implements associated with the remains of the horse, rhinoceros, and hyæna. One fragment of bone in particular, belonging to the rhinoceros, had been calcined, and its carbonized condition bore unmistakeable testimony that it had been burnt while the animal juices were present. There were many other bones also burnt, which indicated the place where fires had been kindled, and food cooked. As we dug our way forward we met with a third area (_c_), that furnished flint and chert implements under the same conditions of deposit as that which tempted us to carry on our excavations. Its relation to the old floors of hyæna-occupation is shown by the dark lines over the area _c_ in Fig. 88. At last the large open chamber (A) was cleared; it measured about thirty feet wide by six feet high, and it extended forty feet inwards. On the left there was a small upward-turning passage, very nearly blocked up with a mass of stalagmite; at the farther end a vertical fissure extended upwards (F), to the surface. This fissure has subsequently been proved to extend downwards to the right, and will doubtless furnish large quantities of animal remains to future explorers.

The large chamber now turned abruptly to the left, and we gradually worked our way into a small horizontal passage about four feet high. Here there was an interval of from three to four inches between the roof and contents, traversed by stalactites, which in some places formed a smooth undulating drapery with stony tassels, and in others tiny pillars extending down to the débris, and, as it were, propping up the roof. These pedestals (see Fig. 15) gradually expanded into round plates of stalagmite, which sometimes met and formed a continuous crust. In some places an infiltration of carbonate of lime had cemented organic remains, stones, and earth into a hard mass, which had to be broken up with gunpowder before it could be removed out of the cave. The excitement of extracting from these blocks their treasures was of the very keenest, for we could not tell what a stroke of the hammer would reveal. Sometimes an elephant’s tooth suddenly came to light, at others a hyæna’s jaw, or a rhinoceros’ tooth, or the antler of a reindeer, or the canine of a bear. The bones were so numerous that they scarcely attracted attention. In one fragment of this breccia, now in the Brighton Museum, are a tusk and carpal of mammoth, the right ulna of the woolly rhinoceros, and an antler of reindeer. In a second, two shoulder-blades and two haunch bones of the woolly rhinoceros, with a coprolite and lower jaw of cave hyæna. As the men removed the large blocks they were brought to the mouth of the cave to be broken up by our smaller instruments. Presently the passage narrowed to about six feet, and presented the following section (Fig. 89). On the floor of the cave there was a layer of red earth two feet in thickness, and, as usual, containing a few organic remains and many stones (Fig. 89, 1). Upon this rested a most remarkable accumulation of bones, and teeth, matted and compacted together, from three to four inches thick, and extending horizontally from one side of the passage to the other (Fig. 89, 2). Next came a layer of dark red earth (Fig. 89, 3), loose and friable, three to four inches thick, supporting in its surface a few rounded stalagmites, and a few stalactitic pillars, that spanned the interval of from three to four inches between it and the roof. This bone-bed was about seven feet wide and fourteen feet long, affording, therefore, a square area of ninety-eight feet (see dotted area B Fig. 83, and in Fig. 90). The enormous quantity of the remains of animals present cannot fairly be estimated even by the large number preserved, because most of the bones were as soft as wet mortar. The five hundred and fifty specimens obtained must be looked upon merely as a small fraction of the whole.

We presently passed beyond the bone-bed, and found that the passage bifurcated (Fig. 83, C and D), the smaller branch going straight forwards and gently upwards (Fig. 90), while the larger stretched at right angles from it and passed gently downwards. In the former there was a second bone-bed similar in every respect to that already described, which continued undiminished in thickness until it rested directly on the floor. It afforded a square area of about fifteen feet. The passage was about sixteen inches high and three feet wide, and gradually narrowed until at a distance of twelve feet from the bifurcation a stalactite six inches long reached the floor and formed a vertical bar, as if to forbid another ingress. When this had been explored as far as we could crawl, the larger branch (Fig. 83, D, and Fig. 91) engaged our attention, and we soon discovered a third layer of bones of the same character as the others, and in the same position, excepting that in some places it was in immediate contact with the roof. In width it was six, in length fourteen, and in square area eighty-four feet. From its further end to the termination of the passage there was not the slightest vestige of bones or teeth, and a stiff grey clay rested on a horizontal layer of sand on the floor. Here the passage suddenly turned upwards until it became so small and barren that it was not worth our while to pursue it farther. It doubtless rises to the surface, like the large fissure opposite the entrance of the cave shown in Fig. 88.[196]

The exploration was resumed the following year by Mr. Ayshford Sanford and myself, and yielded vast quantities of fossil remains. We cleared out the space marked 1863 in the plan, and discovered a flint implement at the point marked _d_, in Fig. 83. My friend the late Mr. Wickham Flower has also worked the cave, more particularly at the right-hand side of the entrance chamber.

The ashes and implements were found in positions, near the mouth of the cave, where man himself may have placed them (see Figs. 83, 88), with the exception of the flint implement at _d_, and an ash of bone imbedded in the earthy matrix between the canine tooth and a coprolite of the hyæna, and cemented to a fragment of dolomitic conglomerate. This was found far in the cave, either at the entrance of the passage B, or in the middle of the passage D. The latter passage yielded the only rolled flint without traces of man’s handiwork. The materials out of which the implements were made were used pretty equally. All those, like Fig. 84, were of flint; all those chipped into a rounded form and flat-oval in section of chert from the Upper Greensand; while the flakes consisted of both used indifferently. Besides these three typical forms, which were most abundant, is a fourth, in form roughly pyramidal, with a smooth and flat base, and a cutting edge all round. Of these we found but two examples, both consisting of chert. In form they are exactly similar to several hundreds found in a British village at Stanlake, in Berkshire, and to those I discovered in a cemetery of the same age at Yarnton, near Oxford. They strongly resemble a cast I have of one found by M. Lartet in the cave of Aurignac. Were it not for this similarity, I should look upon them as cores from which flakes had been struck. The rest are mere splinters, irregular in form, and probably made in the manufacture of the various flint and chert implements. All the flint implements have been altered in colour and structure, either by heat or, as is more probable, by some chemical action. Without exception, the old surfaces present a waxy lustre (by the absence of which forgeries are easily detected), the colour is of a uniform milk-white, and the ordinary conchoidal fracture is replaced by that of porcelain. Some are not harder than chalk. I have met with weathered and calcined flints in Sussex in which similar changes are observable, and in which the difference in the results of chemical action and heat can hardly be detected. The chert implements, on the other hand, show no traces of any such changes, but are similar in colour and structure to the rocks from which they came--the Upper Greensand of the Blackdown Hills.

All the fragments of calcined bone, with the exception of one already mentioned, were found near the entrance (see Fig. 83, _b_), and in a place more suitable for a fire than any other in the cave. I can identify none of them as human. The coarse texture, the structure, and the thickness of one indicate a fragment of a long bone of the rhinoceros.[197] All resemble many splinters strewn about in other parts of the cave, which are not calcined, but were evidently introduced by the hyænas. The calcination may therefore be due to the accident of their lying upon the surface at the time the fire was kindled.

The remains obtained in 1862-3 from three to four thousand in number, afford a vivid picture of the animal life of the time in Somerset. They belong to the following animals, the numbers representing the jaws and teeth only, and the implements:--

Man 35
Cave-Hyæna 467
Cave-Lion 15
Cave-Bear 27
Grizzly Bear 11
Brown Bear 11
Wolf 7
Fox 8
Mammoth 30
Woolly Rhinoceros 233
_Rhinoceros hemitœchus_ 2
Horse 401
The Great Urus 16
Bison 30
The Irish Elk 35
Reindeer 30
Red Deer 2
Lemming 1

The remains of these animals were so intermingled that they must have been living together at the same time. They lie large with small, the more with the less dense, and are not in the least degree sorted by water. There is no evidence of the hyæna succeeding to the cave-bear, or the reindeer to the urus, or that the bears came here to die, as in some of the German caves, or that the herbivores fell, or were swept into open fissures, and left their remains, as in the caves of Hutton and Plymouth. On the contrary, the numerous jaws and teeth of hyæna, and the marks of those teeth upon nearly every one of the specimens, show that they alone introduced the remains that were found in such abundance. And they preyed not merely upon horses, uri, and other herbivores, but upon one another (Figs. 92, 93), and they even overcame the cave-bear and lion in their full prime. Some of the bones of the larger animals, and in particular a leg-bone of a gigantic urus, have been broken short across and not bitten through--a circumstance which points towards one of the causes of the vast accumulation of bones in so small a cave. It is well known that wolves and hyænas at the present day are in the habit of hunting in packs, and of forcing their prey over precipices. The Wookey ravine is admirably situated for this mode of hunting, and would not fail to destroy any animal forced into it from the hill-side. It is therefore very probable that the hyænas sometimes caught their prey in this manner. They would not have dared to attack the bears and lions unless these had been disabled.

But if all the remains of the animals were introduced by the hyænas, they certainly in some cases do not occupy the exact position in which they were left by those animals. One of the bone layers (Fig. 91) for instance, actually touched the roof. This, indeed, has been used as an argument in favour of their having been introduced by water, from some unknown repository. But if this hypothesis be admitted, we are landed in the following dilemma: either the introducing current of water must have passed down the vertical passages, or upwards through the horizontal mouth of the cave. In the former case the three bone layers would not have been found in the narrow passages, but would have been swept out into the wide chamber, where the force of the hypothetical current must have abated. In the latter case the great bulk of the remains would have been found in the chamber, and not in the smaller passages. Moreover, the absence of marks of transport by water, and especially of that sorting action which water as a conveying agent always manifests, renders the view of their being so introduced untenable. On the other hand, the horizontality of the layers of bone, and the presence of sand and of red earth, imply that water was an agent in re-arranging the bones and in introducing some of the contents of the cave. The only solution of the difficulty that I can hazard is the occurrence of floods from time to time, during the occupation of the hyænas, similar to those which now take place in the caverns of the neighbourhood. A few years ago, the outlet of the Axe in the great cave was partially blocked up, and the water rose to a height of upwards of sixteen feet, leaving a horizontal deposit of red earth of the same nature as that in the hyæna-den. Now if we suppose that similar floods were caused by an obstruction in the ravine below the hyæna-den, it may have been flooded, just as the upper galleries of the great cave, and the water laden with sediment might have elevated the layers of matted bone, and some of the scattered remains on the surface, while the current was insufficient to disturb the stones, or to affect to any extent the deposits of former floods. The buoyancy of the organic remains is not required to be greater, on this hypothesis, than in that of their having been introduced by a current through the vertical passages. Some of the wet bones taken straight from the cave were sufficiently light to be carried down by the current of the Axe.

All these facts taken together enable us to form a clear idea of the condition of things at the time the hyæna-den was inhabited. The hyænas were the normal occupants of the cave, and thither they brought their prey. We can realize those animals pursuing elephants and rhinoceroses along the slopes of the Mendip, till they scared them into the precipitous ravine, or watching until the strength of a disabled bear or lion ebbed away sufficiently to allow of its being overcome by their cowardly strength. Man appeared from time to time on the scene, a miserable savage armed with bow and spear, unacquainted with metals, but defended from the cold by coats of skin.[198] Sometimes he took possession of the den and drove out the hyænas; for it is impossible for both to have lived in the same cave at the same time. He kindled his fires at the entrance, to cook his food, and to keep away the wild animals; then he went away, and the hyænas came to their old abode. While all this was taking place there were floods from time to time until eventually the cave was completely blocked up with their deposits.

The winter cold at the time must have been very severe to admit of the presence of the reindeer and lemming.

_The district of the Mendip Hills at a higher level than now._

When we reflect on the vast quantities of the remains of the animals buried in the caves of so limited an area as the Mendip Hills, it is evident that there must have been abundance of food to have enabled them to live in the district. The great marsh now extending from Wells to the sea, and cutting off the Mendips from the fertile region to the south, was probably a rich valley at a higher level than at present, joining the westward plains now submerged under the Bristol Channel. An elevation of from 100 to 300 feet would produce the physical conditions necessary for the sustenance of the herbivora found in the caves both in South Wales and Somersetshire.

_The characters of a Hyæna-den._

The remains of the animals which have been eaten by the cave-hyæna, may be recognized by the following characters. All are more or less scored by teeth, and the only perfect bones are those which are solid, or of very dense texture. The skulls are represented merely by the harder portions. That of the woolly rhinoceros, for example, by the hard pedestal which supports the anterior horn (see Fig. 30). Several of these pedestals occurred in the Wookey hyæna-den. The lower jaws also have lost their angle and coronoid process, and are gnawed to the pattern of the shaded portion of Fig. 92, the less succulent part bearing the teeth being rejected. This holds good of the jaws of all the animals so persistently, that out of more than two hundred from Wookey there was only one exception. The jaw of the glutton (Fig. 82), from Plas Heaton, is also gnawed to the same shape, and one of those of the cave-bear from the cavern of Lherm, considered by M. Garrigou to have been fashioned by the hand of man into an implement, seems to me, after a careful comparison in company with Dr. Falconer, referable solely to the gnawing of the hyæna. In Fig. 92, the lower jaw of an adult hyæna is represented, and in Fig. 93 (1) the upper and lower jaws of a hyæna-whelp. In the latter the teeth marks _a_ and _b_ are remarkably distinct.[199]

The marrow-containing bones are also universally splintered away, until either the articular ends alone are left, as in Fig. 80, or in some cases, as in that of the femur of woolly rhinoceros (Fig. 94), the dense central portion bearing the third trochanter is preserved. This fragment is extremely abundant in nearly all the hyæna-caves in this country. From the invariable habit of the hyæna leaving the bones of its prey in fragments of this kind, their dens are characterized by the absence of perfect long-bones and skulls, and consequently, when these occur in a cave it is certain proof that it was not occupied by these animals. In a great many caves, however, the gnawed fragments are associated with the perfect bones, as, for example, at Banwell, a circumstance that may be accounted for by the untouched carcases and the gnawed fragments being swept in from the surface by a stream falling into a swallow-hole. In all hyæna-dens also are large quantities of _album græcum_, as well as fragments of bone more or less polished by the friction of the hyæna’s feet.

_The Caves of Devonshire._

The ossiferous caves on the south coast of Devonshire, explored during the last fifty years, are by far the most important in this country, since they were the first which were scientifically examined, and the first which established the co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia.

We owe the full details of their history to the labours of the distinguished cave-hunter Mr. Pengelly, F.R.S.,[200] whose writings are freely used in the following account.

_The Oreston Caves._

The first intimation of the presence of fossil bones in the district was furnished by Mr. Whidbey, the engineer in charge of the construction of the Plymouth breakwater, who discovered numerous bones and teeth, imbedded in clayey loam, in some cavernous fissures at Oreston, which were brought before the Royal Society by Sir Everard Home in 1817. Thus Dr. Buckland’s researches in Kirkdale were anticipated by four years. From time to time, since that date, several other fissures and caves close by have furnished remains of rhinoceros, mammoth, hyæna, lion, and other animals. Among the bones and teeth originally sent up by Mr. Whidbey are several which were identified by Prof. Busk,[201] as belonging to the _Rhinoceros megarhinus_, a species that is vastly abundant in the pleiocene strata of northern Italy and is also represented in the early pleistocene forest-bed of Norfolk and Suffolk, and in the lower brickearths of the valley of the Thames at Grays and Crayford. This is the only case on record of the discovery of the animal in a cavern deposit.

The cavernous fissures in the neighbourhood of Yealmpton,[202] about seven miles east-south-east from Plymouth, explored by Mr. Bellamy and Colonel Mudge, R.A., F.R.S. in 1835-6, contained the remains of the hyæna and rhinoceros, and the other animals more usually associated with them. They were probably filled, as in the case of Oreston, mainly by the streams which introduced the pebbles. They may, however, from time to time have been inhabited by the hyænas, although the presence of three skulls of that animal forbids the supposition that they dragged in all the fossil bones.

_The Caves at Brixham._

The series of fissures accidentally discovered in 1858, in quarrying the rock which overlooks the little fishing town of Brixham, known as the Windmill cave, was selected by the late Dr. Falconer,[203] as a spot in which thorough investigation would be likely to decide the then doubtful question of the co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia. Kent’s Hole had been disturbed by repeated diggings, and the results might be viewed with suspicion. He, therefore, urged the importance of a systematic examination of this virgin cave with such effect, that it was undertaken by the Royal and Geological Societies, and a committee was appointed, comprising, amongst others, Dr. Falconer, Prof. Ramsay, Mr. Prestwich, Sir Charles Lyell, Prof. Owen, Mr. Godwin-Austen, and Mr. Pengelly. To the superintendence of the last is mainly due the minute care with which the exploration was conducted. The remains have been identified by Dr. Falconer and Prof. Busk. The work was commenced in July 1858, and completed in the summer of 1859.[204]

The cave consists of three principal galleries, with diverging passages, running in the direction of the joints from north to south, and from east to west, communicating with the surface at four points. The following is the general section (Fig. 95) of the deposits in descending order.

(A.) On the floor was a layer of stalagmite, varying from a few inches to upwards of a foot in thickness, and containing only twenty-five bones, among which were the humerus of a bear, and the antler of a reindeer.

(B.) Reddish cave-earth with fragments and blocks of limestone, and of stalagmite, generally averaging from two to four feet. In it 1,102 bones were discovered irregularly scattered through its mass, and belonging to mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, lion, cave, grizzly, and brown bears, reindeer, and others. They varied in state of preservation, and some were scored and marked by teeth. Associated with these, thirty-six rude flint implements were met with, of indisputable human workmanship, and of the same general order as those figured by the Rev. J. MacEnery from Kent’s Hole. Among them was one lanceolate implement with rounded point and unworked butt end, considered by Mr. John Evans, F.R.S., of the type of those usually found in the valley gravels.[205] There was, therefore, the most conclusive evidence that man inhabited the neighbourhood, either before or during the time of the accumulation of B, and before those physical changes took place by which the red silt ceased to be deposited, or the stalagmite above began to be formed.

(C.) At the bottom of the cave-earth was a deposit of gravel, principally of rounded pebbles and devoid of fossils.

The early history of the cave, as shown by these deposits, is given by Mr. Prestwich, in the report presented to the Royal Society, as follows:--

“Looking at all the phenomena of Brixham cave, the conclusion your reporter has arrived at is, that the formation of the cave commenced and was carried on simultaneously with the excavation of the valley; that the small streams flowing down the upper tributary branches of the valley entered the western openings of the cave and, traversing the fissures in the limestone, escaped by lower openings in the chief valley, just as the Grotto d’Arcy was formed by an overflow from the cave taking a short cut through the limestone hills, round which the river winds. These tributary streams brought in the shingle bed (Fig. 95, C), which fills the bottom of the fissure. It was only during occasional droughts, when the streams were dry, that the cave seems to have been frequented by animals, their remains being very scarce in that bed, while indications of man are comparatively numerous. As the excavation of the valley proceeded, the level of the stream was lowered and became more restricted to the valley-channel. The cave consequently became drier, and was more resorted to by predatory animals, who carried in their prey to devour, and was less frequented by man. At the same time with the periodical floods, which there is every reason to believe, from other investigations, were so great during the quaternary period, the cave would long continue to be subject to inundations, the muddy waters of which deposited the silt forming the cave-earth, burying progressively the bones left from season to season by succeeding generations of beasts of prey. By the repetition at distant intervals of these inundations, and by the accumulation during the intervening periods of fresh crops of bones, the bone-bearing cave-earth, B, was gradually formed. During this time the occasional visits of man are indicated by the rare occurrence of a flint implement, lost, probably, as he groped his way through the dark passages of the cave. As the valley became deeper, and as with the change of climate at the close of the (pleistocene) quaternary period the floods became less, so did the cave become drier and more resorted to by animals. At last it seems to have become a place for permanent resort for bears; their remains in all stages of growth, including even sucking cubs, were met with in the upper part of the cave-earth, in greater numbers than were the bones of any other animals. These animals resorted especially to the darker and more secluded flint-knife gallery, where 221 out of 366 of their determinable bones were found, whereas only twenty-six were met with in the reindeer gallery.

“Finally, as the cave became out of the reach of the flood waters, the drippings from the roof, which up to this period had, with the single exception before mentioned, been lost in the accumulating cave-earth, or deposited in thin calcareous incrustations on the exposed bones, now commenced that deposit of stalagmite which sealed up and preserved undisturbed the shingle and cave-earth deposited under former and different conditions. The cave, however, still continued to be the occasional resort of beasts of prey; for sparse remains of the reindeer, together with those of the bear and rhinoceros, were found in the stalagmite floor. After a time the falling in of the roof at places (and any earthquake movement may have detached blocks from it), and the external surface weathering, stopped up some parts of the cave, and closed its entrances with an accumulation of débris. From that time it ceased to be accessible, except to the smaller rodents and burrowing animals, and so remained unused and untrodden until its recent discovery and exploration.”[206]

Mr. Pengelly points out[207] an episode in the history of the cave, between the formation and the filling up with its present contents, which is of considerable importance, viewed in relation to the deposits in Kent’s Hole. Over the empty space in D, of Fig. 95, is an ancient stalagmite floor, E, constituting the present ceiling, and shutting off D from the true roof above, E. At the time this was formed, the cave must have been filled up to that level with débris, fragments of which are set in the inferior portion of the calcareous sheet. Subsequently, and before the present contents, A and B, were introduced, the whole of this material has been swept away, probably by an unusual flood similar to that alluded to in the second chapter in the Clapham cave. The pieces of stalagmite in the cave-earth are, probably, some of the relics of the older floor. This filling up, re-excavating, and re-filling with its present contents, are phenomena which considerably complicate the problems offered not merely by Brixham cave, but also by those of Kent’s Hole.

Two other caverns in the neighbourhood of Brixham, the “Ash Hole” and “Bench,” have also yielded the remains of the reindeer, hyæna, and several other pleistocene species, and are fully described by Mr. Pengelly, in his essays contributed to the Devonshire Association.[208]

_Kent’s Hole._

The celebrated cave of Kent’s Hole,[209] known from time immemorial, was first found to contain fossil bones by Mr. Northmore, and Sir W. C. Trevelyan in 1824, and was subsequently explored by the Rev. J. MacEnery in the five following years, during which he met with flint implements in association with the extinct animals in the undisturbed strata, and obtained the teeth of the sabre-toothed feline, named by Prof. Owen _Machairodus latidens_, which has never before or since been discovered in any other cavern in Britain. His manuscripts unfortunately were not used until they passed into the hands of Mr. Vivian, of Torquay, who published an abstract in 1859. Subsequently they were published in full by Mr. Pengelly, in 1869. The discovery of the flint implements, verified by Mr. Godwin Austen in 1840, and six years later also by a committee of the Torquay Natural History Society, was received with incredulity by the scientific world, until the result of the exploration of the Brixham cave had placed the fact of the co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia beyond all doubt. In 1864 a committee[210] was appointed by the British Association for the carrying on the investigation, which from that time to the present has been conducted under the careful supervision of Mr. Pengelly.

The cave consists of two parallel series of chambers and galleries, an eastern and a western, which penetrate the low cliff of Devonian limestone in the direction of the joints, with a northern and southern entrance, very nearly at the same level, “about fifty feet apart, from 180 to 190 feet above the level of mean tide, and about seventy feet above the bottom of the valley immediately adjacent.” The largest chamber of the eastern series is sixty-two feet from east to west, and fifty-three from north to south. The extent of the cave has not yet been ascertained.

The contents, examined with the minutest care (on Mr. Pengelly’s method, see Appendix I.), were found to be arranged in the following order.

(A.) The surface was composed of dark earth varying in thickness from a few inches to a foot, on which rested large blocks of limestone, fallen from the roof. It contained mediæval remains, Roman pottery, and combs fashioned out of bone, similar to those discovered in the Victoria and Dowkerbottom caves in Yorkshire, which prove that the cave was frequented during the historic period. A barbed iron spear-head, a bronze spear-head, other bronze articles, and polished stone celts, establish the fact that it was also used during the iron, bronze, and neolithic ages. This stratum contained the broken bones of the short-horn (_Bos longifrons_), goat, and horse, large quantities of charcoal, and was to a great extent a refuse-heap like that in the Victoria cave.

]

(B.) Below this was a stalagmite floor, varying in thickness from one to three feet, covering

(C.) The red earth, with stones, bones of the extinct animals, and flint implements, associated together in the greatest confusion, as well as large lumps of stalagmite and of breccia, which had been torn out of a pre-existent floor. In the “vestibule,” near one of the entrances, a black layer beneath the stalagmite, composed, to a great extent, of charcoal, indicated the position of the fire-places, and contained a vast number of rude unpolished palæolithic implements. There were also local stalagmitic bands. The flint implements were met with at various depths, and consist of three distinct types: the lanceolate, Fig. 96, the oval, with edge carefully chipped for cutting, Fig. 97, and the flake (see Fig. 106). Besides these a few implements have been discovered of the same shape as those found in the gravel beds; in outline and section roughly triangular, and tapering to a point from a blunt base, which was probably intended to be held in the hand.[212] Several articles of bone and antler were also met with, comprising an awl, or piercer, a needle with the eye large enough to admit small packthread, and three harpoon-heads, one of which is barbed on both sides (Fig. 98), the others being merely barbed on one side (Fig. 99). A rounded pebble of coarse red sandstone, battered into a cheese-like form, by being used as a hammer (Fig. 100), was also found. All these articles bring the palæolithic inhabitants of Kent’s Hole into relation with those of the caves and rock-shelters of the south of France, to be described in the next chapter.

(D.) The cave-earth rested on a compact, dark red breccia composed of angular fragments of limestone and pebbles of sandstone embedded in a sandy calcareous paste, identical in constitution with the fragments of the older breccia discovered in the cave-earth. It has furnished bones of bears, and four flint implements. The cave-earth, C, and the breccia, E, seem to stand to one another in an inverse ratio as regards thickness: where the former was thin, the latter was sometimes as much as twelve feet thick. From this relation, as well as from the imbedded fragments of the latter, it may be concluded that the former is the more modern, and that in the interval between their accumulation the latter had been, to a considerable extent, broken up.

There is very good reason for the belief, that before any of the present cave-earth was introduced, Kent’s Hole had been filled nearly to the roof by an older cave accumulation, now represented by the undisturbed breccia and the included fragments. In a portion of the cave termed the “gallery,” there is a sheet of stalagmite, extending overhead from wall to wall, and constituting a ceiling that reaches from wall to wall, without further support than that offered by its own cohesion. Above it, in the limestone rock, there is a considerable alcove. This branch of the cavern, therefore, is divided into three stories or flats, that below the floor occupied with cave-earth, that between the floor and the ceiling entirely unoccupied, and that above the ceiling also without a deposit of any kind. For such a sheet of stalagmite to have been formed it is absolutely necessary for the cave to have been filled up to its level with materials of some kind, just as it is necessary for the formation of a film of ice that it should be crystallized from the surface of water. We may, therefore, infer that Kent’s Hole, like Brixham, was originally filled up to the level of the ceiling (see Fig. 95, E), then that the contents were swept out, with the exception of the breccia, and lastly, that the present cave-earth was introduced. The occurrence of the remains of bear, and of flint implements, in this breccia also proves that man and bears were living in the district, while it was being accumulated, probably by the action of the floods to which, from time to time, the cave was subjected. All the flint implements in the breccia are of the ruder and larger form which is presented by those from the pleistocene deposits of the Somme, Seine, and the rivers of the south and east of England.

While engaged in the identification of the mammals in 1869, with Mr. W. A. Sanford, I detected splinters of bears’ canines, from the cave-earth, remarkable for their density, crystalline structure, and semi-conchoidal fracture, which were in the same mineral state as those from the older breccia. One of these had been fashioned into a flake after its mineralization, and presented an edge chipped by use. The tooth from which it was struck was, probably, imbedded and mineralized in the older breccia, then washed out of it, and afterwards chosen for the manufacture of an implement. It was already fossil and altered in structure in the palæolithic age.

_The probable Age of the Machairodus of Kent’s Hole._

The most remarkable animal discovered in the cave, by the Rev. J. MacEnery, is the _Machairodus latidens_,[213] or large lion-like animal, armed with double-edged canines, in shape like the blade of a sabre, and with two serrated edges. Five canines and two incisors were dug out of the cave-earth, C, in the Wolf’s Passage, along with vast quantities of bones and teeth of the mammoth, rhinoceros, Irish elk, horse, and hyæna. One of the canines is represented in Figs. 101, 102, which are taken from one of the original plates drawn for Dr. Buckland, and now in the Museum of the Torquay Natural History Society. The two incisors, Figs. 103, 104, 105, are also characterised by their serrated edges. A third was discovered by the exploration committee in the same spot, in 1872, scarcely to be distinguished from that in Figs. 103, 104, which finally dispelled the scepticism of some eminent naturalists as to whether any of these teeth had been obtained in the cave by the Rev. J. MacEnery.

The _Machairodus latidens_ has been found in pleistocene strata in two localities in France: in a deposit of diluvium, near Puy, by M. Aymard, and in the cavern of Baume in the Jura, considered by M. Lartet to be of preglacial age.[214] In the latter it was associated with the horse, ox, wild-boar, elephant, a non-tichorine species of rhinoceros, the cave-bear, and the spotted hyæna. In the autumn of 1873, I met with proof that the animal also lived in France in the pleiocene period. M. Lortet, the Director of the Museum of Natural History, at Lyons, called my attention to a canine, in the Palais des Beaux Arts, which coincides exactly in all its dimensions with one of those from Kent’s Hole. It was found at Chagny (Saône et Loire) near Dijon, along with _Mastodon arvernensis_, the Etruscan or megarhine species of rhinoceros, horse, beaver and hyæna, somewhat resembling that from the Crag (_Hyæna antiqua_) of Suffolk described by Mr. Lankester. The species, therefore, is pleiocene, and it belongs to a genus which is widely distributed in the meiocene strata of Europe and North America, as well as in the pleiocene of Europe.

To what era in the complicated history of Kent’s Hole is this animal to be assigned? The more ancient, or the more modern? The evidence on this point is, to a certain extent, contradictory. On the one hand it is a pleiocene species, belonging to a group of animals that inhabited Europe before the lowering of the temperature caused the invasion of the arctic mammalia from the north and the east: it is moreover of a distinctly southern type. In the teeth marks on the incisors, Figs. 103, 104, 105, as well as on the canines, we have unmistakeable traces of the presence of the hyæna; and since the spotted hyæna abounds in the cave, to its teeth the marks in question may probably be referred. It seems, therefore, probable that the animal inhabited Devonshire during an early stage of the pleistocene period, before the arctic invaders had taken full possession of the valley of the English Channel, and of the low grounds which now lie within the 100-fathom line off the Atlantic shore of Western France. There must necessarily have been a swinging to and fro of animal life over the great, fertile low-lying region, which is now submerged (see Map, Fig. 126); and before the temperature of France had been sufficiently lowered to exterminate or drive out the southern forms, it is most natural to suppose that in warm seasons some of the southern mammalia would find their way northwards, and especially a formidable carnivore such as the machairodus. The extreme rarity of its remains forbids the hypothesis that it was a regular inhabitant of Britain during the pleistocene age.

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On the other hand, the recent discovery of a second incisor in the uppermost portion of the cave-earth, in July 1872, in the same condition as the remains usually found, and associated with the bones and teeth of hyæna, horse, and bear, is considered by Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Pengelly proof of the animal having lived during the deposition of the later cave-earth, or in the later stage of the pleistocene. The condition of a bone, however, is a very fallacious guide to its antiquity, and although the fragments of the older contents of the cave are in a different mineral state, it is improbable that the ossiferous contents of so large a cave should have been mineralized exactly in the same way. Nor is an appeal to its perfect state conclusive, since several teeth of bear, which I have examined from the breccia, are equally perfect.

The view of the high antiquity of machairodus in Kent’s Hole derives support from the discovery of _Rhinoceros megarhinus_ at Oreston, a species which is very abundant in the Italian pleiocene strata, and not uncommon in those of France,--a species with its headquarters in the south, but ranging as far north as Norfolk in the early stage of the pleistocene age, represented by the forest bed of Cromer, and that lived in the valley of the Thames, while the gravel-beds of Crayford and Grays Thurrock were being deposited by the ancient river. The occurrence of either of these animals in a cave is exceptional, and the presence of both in caves on the edge of the great plain extending southwards from the present coastline of Devon, seems to me to imply that both were open during the early stage of the pleistocene, while the pleiocene mammalia were retreating before the southward advance of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, spotted hyæna, reindeer, and their congeners, at a time anterior to the lowering of the temperature that culminated in the glacial period. For these reasons it seems to me probable that the machairodus belongs to an early rather than a late stage in the history of Kent’s Hole.

There is an important point of resemblance between the mode of the occurrence of the machairodus in Kent’s Hole, and of the megarhine rhinoceros at Oreston. The remains of both were met with only _in one spot_, and were not scattered through the chambers and passages. It may have happened that in the physical changes which those caves have undergone, both were preserved in a fissure like that described in the Uphill cave (p. 294), and that subsequently they dropped down and became imbedded in a newer deposit. In fixing the age of strata in caves it seems to me that the zoological evidence is of far greater weight than that of mere position, which may be the result of accidental circumstances.

_The Caves of Ireland._

The caves of Ireland would probably afford as rich a fauna as those of Britain, had they been explored with equal care. In one at Shandon, near Dungarvan, Waterford, remains of the brown bear (_U. arctos_) reindeer, horse, and mammoth were discovered in 1859, by Mr. Brenan.[216] The first of these animals became extinct in Ireland before the historic period, while it survived in Britain at least as late as the Roman occupation.

The cave-bear is also recorded by Dr. Carte,[217] from the same place, but the thigh bone assigned to it seems to me to belong to the brown, or common species. The mammoth, so abundant in Britain, has only been discovered in two other localities in Ireland, at Whitechurch near Dungarvan, and at Magherry near Belturbet.[218]

The range of these animals over Great Britain and Ireland in the pleistocene age enables us to realize the ancient physical geography, which will be treated in the next and following chapters as part of the general question of the physical condition of north-western Europe at that time.