Chapter XV: Front Matter (15)

The discoveries in Kent's Hole and in the Creswell caves prove further that palaeolithic man was in two stages of civilization--the ruder or riverdrift man, with implements of the type found in the river gravels (see ARCHAEOLOGY; and PALAEOLITHIC) being the older; and the more highly advanced, or the cave-man, mainly characterized by the better implements, and a singular facility in depicting animal life (as shown by the figure of a horse incised on the fragment of a bone found in the Creswell caves), being the newer. We may also conclude from the absence of palaeolithic implements from the glaciated regions in which most of these caves occur, that both riverdrift and cave-men dwelt in middle and northern Britain in the pre-glacial age, their remains being protected in the caverns from the denuding forces that removed all traces of their existence from the surface of the ground in glacial and post-glacial times. The riverdrift man is, however, proved to be post-glacial in southern and eastern England, by the occurrence of his implements in the river gravels of that age. Both these peoples inhabited southern England and the continent before and after the glacial period. The riverdrift man, whose implements occur in river deposits in middle and southern Europe, in Africa, Palestine and Hindustan, is everywhere in the same age of primitive barbarism, and has not as yet been identified with any living race. The cave-men are in a higher and more advanced stage, and led a life in Europe identical with that of the Eskimos in the Arctic regions.

_The Pleistocene Caves of the European Continent._--The researches of Mortillet have proved that the same two groups of cave-dwellers occur in the caves of France, the older being represented by the Chelleen and Mousterien sections, and the newer by that of Solutre and La Madelaine. To the former belong the human remains found in the caverns of Spy and Neanderthal, which prove that the riverdrift man had "the most brutal of all known human skulls." To the latter we must assign all the caves and rock-shelters of Perigord, with the better implements, explored by Lartet and Christy in 1863-1864 in the valleys of the Vezere and Dordogne. These offer as vivid a picture of the life of the cave-men as that revealed of Italian manners in the 1st century by the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The old floors of human occupation consist of broken bones of animals killed in the chase, mingled with rude implements and weapons of bone and unpolished stone, and with charcoal and burnt stones, which indicate the position of the hearths. Flakes without number, awls, lance-heads, hammers and saws made of flint rest _pele-mele_ with bone needles, sculptured reindeer antlers, arrowheads and harpoons, and bones of the reindeer, bison, horse, ibex, Saiga antelope and musk sheep. These singular accumulations of debris mark the places where the ancient hunters lived, and are merely the refuse cast aside. The reindeer formed by far the greater portion of the food, and must have lived in enormous herds at that time in the centre of France. From this, as well as from the presence of the most arctic of the herbivores, the musk sheep, we may infer the severe climate of that portion of France at that time. Besides these animals the cave bear and lion have been met with in one, and the mammoth in five localities, and their remains bear marks of cutting or scraping which showed they fell a prey to the hunters. The most remarkable remains left behind in these refuse heaps are the sculptured reindeer antlers and figures engraved on fragments of schist and on ivory. A well-defined outline of an ox stands out boldly from one piece of antler; a second represents a reindeer kneeling down in an easy attitude with his head thrown up in the air so that the antlers rest on the shoulders, and the back forms an even surface for a handle, which is too small to be grasped by an ordinary European hand; in a third a man stands close to a horse's head, and on the other side of the same cylinder are two heads of bisons drawn with sufficient clearness to ensure recognition by any one who has seen that animal. On a fourth the natural curvature of one of the tines has been taken advantage of by the artist to engrave the head and the characteristic recurved horns of the ibex; and on a fifth horses are represented with large heads, upright dishevelled manes and shaggy ungroomed tails. The most striking figure is that of the mammoth engraved on a fragment of its own tusk; the peculiar spiral curvature of the tusk and the long mane, which are now not to be found in any living elephant, prove that the original was familiar to the eye of the artist. These drawings probably employed the idle hours of the hunter, and hand down to us the scenes which he witnessed in the chase. They are full of artistic feeling and are evidently drawn from life. The mammoth is engraved in its own ivory, and the reindeer and the stag on their respective antlers. Further researches have revealed the fact that in Auvergne and in the Pyrenees the cave-men ornamented some of their caves with incised figures and polychrome frescoes of the wild animals. Riviere has discovered on the walls of the grotto of La Mouthe (Dordogne) three large hunting scenes, one with bisons and horses, a second representing a primitive hut, a bison, reindeer, ibex and mammoth, and a third with a mammoth, hinds and horses. In the Pyrenees similar frescoes have been described by Cartailhac and Breuil. They are on the walls of the cavern and roof of Altamira, and on the walls of Marsoulas. The outlines have been engraved first, and afterwards filled in with colour in brown and red ochre and black oxide of manganese.

The cave-men ranged over middle Europe as far south as the Pyrenees and the Alps, and inhabited the caverns of Belgium and Germany, Hungary and Switzerland. Their remains have not as yet been met with in southern Europe. They lived by hunting and fishing, they were fire users, and lit up the darkness of their caves with stone lamps filled with fat (Altamira). They were clad in skins sewn together with sinews of reindeer or strips of intestines. They used huts as well as caves for habitation. They had a marvellous facility for drawing animal figures. They possessed no domestic animals, nor were they acquainted with spinning or with the potter's art. We have no evidence that they buried their dead--the interments, such as those of Aurignac, Les Eyzies and Mentone, most probably belonging to a later age.

If these remains be compared with those of existing races, it will be found that the cave-men were in the same hunter stage of civilization as the Eskimos, and that they are unlike any other races of hunters. If they were not allied to the Eskimos by blood, there can be no doubt that they handed down to the latter their art and their manner of life. The bone needles, and many of the harpoons, as well as the flint spearheads, arrowheads and scrapers, are of precisely the same form as those now in use amongst the Eskimos. The artistic designs from the caves of France, Belgium and Switzerland, are identical in plan and workmanship with those of the Eskimos, with this difference only, that the hunting scenes familiar to the Palaeolithic cave-dwellers were not the same as those familiar to the inhabitants of the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Each represented the animals which he knew, and the whale, walrus and seal were unknown to the inland dwellers of Aquitaine, just as the mammoth, bison and wild horse are unknown to the Eskimos. The reindeer, which they both knew, is represented in the same way by both. The practice of accumulating large quantities of the bones of animals round their dwelling-places, and the habit of splitting the bones for the sake of the marrow, are the same in both. The hides were prepared with the same sort of instruments, and the needles with which they were sewn together are of the same pattern. The stone lamps were used by both. In both there was the same disregard of sepulture. All these facts can hardly be mere coincidences caused by both peoples leading a savage life under similar conditions. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that, so far as we have any evidence of the race to which the cave-dwellers belong, that evidence points only in the direction of the Eskimos. It is to a considerable extent confirmed by a consideration of the animals found in the caves. The reindeer and musk sheep afford food to the Eskimos now in the Arctic Circle, just as they afforded it to the cave-men in Europe; and both these animals have been traced by their remains from the Pyrenees to the north-east through Europe and Asia as far as the very regions in which they now live. The mammoth and bison also have been tracked by their remains in the frozen river gravels and morasses through Siberia as far as the American side of Bering Strait. Palaeolithic man appeared in Europe with the arctic mammalia, lived in Europe with them, and in all human probability retreated to the north-east along with them.

There are refuse heaps in north-eastern Siberia containing the remains of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros as well as the reindeer and musk sheep, which may be referred with equal justice to the cave-men or to the Eskimos.

_Ancient Geography of Europe._--The remains of man and the animals described in the preceding paragraphs have been introduced into the caves either by man or the wild beasts, or by streams of water, which may or may not now occupy their ancient courses; and the fact that the same species are to be met with in the caves of France, Switzerland and Britain implies that our island formed part of the continent, and that there were no physical barriers to prevent their migration from the Alps as far to the north-west as Ireland.

The same conclusion may be gathered from the exploration of caves in the south of Europe, which has resulted in the discovery of African species, in Gibraltar, Sicily and Malta. In the first of these the spotted hyena, the serval and Kaffre cat lie side by side with the horse, grizzly bear and slender rhinoceros (_R. leptorhinus_)--see Falconer's _Palaeontographical Memoirs_. To these African animals inhabiting the Iberian peninsula in the Pleistocene age, Lartet has added the African elephant and striped hyena, found in a stratum of gravel near Madrid, along with flint implements. The hippopotamus, spotted hyena and African elephant occur in the caves of Sicily, and imply that in ancient times there was a continuity of land between that spot and Africa, just as the presence of the _Elephas antiquus_ proves the non-existence of the Straits of Messina during a portion, to say the least, of the Pleistocene age. A small species of hippopotamus (_H. Pentlandi_) occurs in incredible abundance in the Sicilian caves. It has also been found in those of Malta along with an extinct pigmy elephant species (_E. Melitensis_). It has also been discovered in Candia and in the Peloponnese. For these animals to have found their way to these regions, a continuity of land is necessary. The view advanced by Dr Falconer and Admiral Spratt, that Europe was formerly connected with Africa by a bridge of land extending southwards from Sicily, is fully borne out by these considerations. The present physical geography of the Mediterranean has been produced by a depression of land to the amount of about 400 fathoms, by which the Sicilo-African and Ibero-African barriers have been submerged, and Crete and Malta separated from the South-European continent. It is extremely probable that this submergence took place at the same time that the adjoining sea-bottom was elevated to about the same amount so as to constitute that region now known as the Sahara.

_Pleistocene Caves of the Americas and Australia._--The Pleistocene caverns of the Euro-Asiatic continent contain the progenitors of the animals now alive in some parts of the Old World, the extinct forms being closely allied to those now living in the same geographical provinces. Those of Brazil and of Pennsylvania present us with animals whose nearest analogues are to be found in North and South America, such as sloths, armadillos and agoutis. Those, again, of Australia present us with marsupials (_metatheria_) only, allied to, or identical with, those of that most ancient continent. The extinct forms in each case are mainly those of the larger animals, which, from their large size, and low fecundity, would be specially liable to be beaten in the battle for life by their smaller and more fertile contemporaries, and less likely to survive those changes in their environment which have undoubtedly taken place in the long lapse of ages. It is, therefore, certain that the mammalian life in the Old, New and Australian worlds, was as well marked out into geographical provinces in the Pleistocene age as at the present time, and that it has been continuous in these areas from that remote time to the present day.

_Prehistoric Caves of Neolithic Age in Europe._--The prehistoric caves are distinguished from Pleistocene by their containing the remains of domestic animals, and by the wild animals to which they have afforded shelter belonging to living species. They are divisible into three groups according to the traces of man which occur in them--into the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages.

The Neolithic caves are widely spread throughout Europe, and have been used as the habitations and tombs of the early races who invaded Europe from the East with their flocks and herds. The first of these systematically explored was at Perthi Chwareu, near the village of Llandegla, Denbighshire, in 1869. In the following years five others were discovered close by, as well as a second group in the neighbourhood of Cefn on the banks of the Elwy. They contained polished celts, flint flakes, rude pottery and human skeletons, along with the broken bones of the pig, dog, horse, Celtic shorthorn and goat. The remains of the wild animals belong to the wolf, fox, badger, bear, wild boar, stag, roe, hare and rabbit. Most of the bones were broken or cut, and the whole group was obviously an accumulation which resulted from these caves having been used as dwellings. They had subsequently been used for burial. The human skeletons in them were of all ages, from infancy to old age; and the interments had been successive until each became filled. The bodies were buried in the contracted posture which is so characteristic of Neolithic interments generally. The men to whom these skeletons belonged were a short race, the tallest being about 5 ft. 6 in., and the shortest 4 ft. 10 in.; their skulls are orthognathic, or not presenting jaws advancing beyond a vertical line dropped from the forehead, in shape long or oval, and of fair average capacity. The face was oval, and the cheek bones were not prominent. Some of the individuals were characterized by a peculiar flattening of the shinbone (platycnemism), which probably stood in relation to the free action of the foot that was not hampered by the use of a rigid sole or sandal. This, however, cannot be looked upon as a race character, or as a tendency towards a simian type of leg. These Neolithic cave-dwellers have been proved to be identical in physique with the builders of the cairns and tumuli which lie scattered over the face of Great Britain and Ireland. (See Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_.) They have also been met with abundantly in France. In the Caverne de l'Homme Mort, for example, in the department of Lozere, explored in 1871, the association of remains was of precisely the same nature as those mentioned above, and the human skeletons were of the same small type. The same class of remains has also been discovered in Gibraltar, in the caves of Windmill Hill, and some others. The human remains examined by Busk are of precisely the same type as those of Denbighshire. In the work of Don Manuel Gongora J. Martinez (_Antiguedades prehistoricas de Andalusia_, 1868), several interments are described in the cave of Murcielagos, which penetrates the limestone out of which the grand scenery of the southern Sierra Nevada has been to a great extent carved. In one place a group of three skeletons was met with, one of which was adorned with a plain coronet of gold, and clad in a tunic made of esparto grass finely plaited, so as to form a pattern like that on some of the gold ornaments in Etruscan tombs. In a second spot farther within, twelve skeletons formed a semicircle round one covered with a tunic of skin, and wearing a necklace of esparto grass, ear-rings of black stone, and ornaments of shell and wild boar tusk. There were other articles of plaited esparto grass, such as baskets and sandals. There were also flint flakes, polished-stone axes, implements of bone and wood, together with pottery of the same type as that from Gibraltar. The same class of remains have been discovered in the Woman's Cave, near Alhama de Granada. From the physical identity of the human remains in all these cases it maybe inferred that in the Neolithic Age a long-headed, small race inhabited the Iberian peninsula, extending through France, as far north as Britain, and to the north-west as far as Ireland--a race considered by Professor Busk "to be at the present day represented by at any rate a part of the population now inhabiting the Basque provinces." This identification of the ancient Neolithic cave-dwellers with the modern Basque-speaking inhabitant of the western Pyrenees is corroborated by the elaborate researches of Broca, Virchow and Thurnam on modern Basque skulls. It may, therefore, be concluded that in the Neolithic Age an Iberian population occupied the whole of the area mentioned above, inhabiting caves and burying their dead in caves and chambered tombs, and possessed of the same habits of life. The remains of the same small, oval-featured, long-headed race have been found in Belgium in the cave of Chauvaux, and they have been described by Sergi in southern Europe under the name of the Mediterranean race.

There is no evidence that any other race except the Iberic buried their dead in the caves of Britain in the Neolithic Age. In Belgium, however, the exploration of the cave of Sclaigneaux by Soreil proves that broad-headed men of the type defined by Huxley and Thurnam as brachycephalic, and characterized by high cheek-bones, projecting muscles and large stature, the average height being 5 ft. 8.4 in. (Thurnam), inhabited and buried their dead in the caves of that region. In France they occur in the sepulchral cave of Orrouy (Oise) in association with those of the Iberic type. They have also been met with in Gibraltar. This type is undistinguishable from the Celtic (Goidelic) or Gaulish, found so abundantly in the chambered tombs of the Neolithic Age in France. Both these ancient races are represented at the present day by the Basques and Aquitanians of France and Spain, and by the Celts or Gauls of France, Britain and the Mediterranean border of Spain, their relative antiquity being proved by an appeal to their history and geographical distribution. For just as the earliest records show that the Iberic power extended as far north as the Loire, and as far east as the Rhone, so we have proof of the gradual retrocession of the Iberic frontier southwards, under the attacks of the successive Celtic hordes, until ultimately we find the latter in possession of a considerable part of southern Spain, forming by their union with the conquered the powerful nation of Celt-Iberi. The Iberians were in possession of the continent before they were dispossessed by the Goidels, and at a later time by the Brythons. They are recognized by Tacitus in Britain in the Silures of Wales; and they are still to be seen in the small, dark, lithe inhabitants of North Wales. The discovery of the characteristic skulls of both these races in the same family vault in the cave of Gop near Prestatyn, Flintshire, proves that the two races were mingled together in Britain as far back as the Bronze Age.

From the present distribution of this non-Aryan race it is obvious that they were gradually pushed back westward by the advance of tribes coming from the East, and following those routes which were subsequently taken by the Low and High Germans.

The exploration of the Grotta dei Colombi, in the island of Palmaria, overlooking the Gulf of Spezzia, in 1873, proves that the stories scattered through the classical writers, that the caves on the Mediterranean shores were inhabited by cannibals, are not altogether without foundation. In it broken and cut bones of children and young adults were found along with those of the goat, hog, fox, wolf, wild-cat, flint flakes, bone implements and shells perforated for suspension.

_Prehistoric Caves of Bronze and Iron Ages._--The extreme rarity of articles of bronze in the European caves implies that they were rarely used by the Bronze folk for habitation or burial. Bronze weapons mingled with gold ornaments have, however, been discovered in the Heatheryburn cave near Stanhope, Durham, as well as in those of Kirkhead in Cartmell, in Thor's cave in Staffordshire, and the Cat Hole in Gower in Glamorganshire. In the Iberian peninsula the cave of Cesareda, explored by Signor Delgado, in the valley of the Tagus, contained bronze articles, associated with broken and cut human bones, as well as those of domestic animals, rendering it probable that cannibalism was practised in early times in that region. Busk believes, however, that the facts are insufficient to support the charge of cannibalism against the ancient Portuguese.

Caves containing articles of iron, and therefore belonging to that division of the prehistoric age, are so unimportant that they do not deserve notice in this place. As man increased in civilization he preferred to live in houses of his own building, and he no longer buried his dead in the natural sepulchres provided for him in the rock.

Prehistoric caves have been rarely explored in extra-European areas. Among those which abound in Palestine, one in Mount Lebanon, examined by Canon Tristram, contained flint implements along with charcoal and broken bones and teeth, some of which may be referred to a small ox, undistinguishable from the small short-horn, _Bos longifrons_. In North America the remains found by F.W. Putnam in the caves of Kentucky, consisting of moccasins, rudely-plaited cloth, and other articles, may be referred to the same division.

_Historic Caves in Britain._--The historic caves have only attracted notice in fairly recent years, and in Britain alone, principally through the labours of the Settle Cave Committee from the year 1869 to the present day. To them is due the exploration of the Victoria cave, which had been discovered and partially investigated as early as the year 1838. It consists of three large ill-defined chambers opening on the face of the cliff, 1450 ft. above the sea, and filled with debris very nearly up to the roof. It presented three distinct eras of occupation--one by hyenas, which dragged into it rhinoceroses, bisons, mammoths, horses, reindeer and bears. This was defined from the next occupation, which is probably of the Neolithic Age, by a layer of grey clay, on the surface of which rested a bone harpoon and a few flint flakes and bones. Then after an interval of debris at the entrance was a layer of charcoal, broken bones, fragments of old hearths, and numerous instruments of savage life associated with broken pottery, Roman coins, and the rude British imitations of them, various articles of iron, and elaborate personal ornaments, which implied a considerable development of the arts. The evidence of the coins stamps the date of the occupation of the cave to be between the first half of the 5th century and the English conquest. Some of the brooches present a peculiar flamboyant and spiral pattern in relief, of the same character as the art of some of the illuminated manuscripts, as for example one of the Anglo-Saxon gospels at Stockholm, and of the gospels of St Columban in Trinity College, Dublin. It is mostly allied to that work which is termed by Franks late Celtic. From its localization in Britain and Ireland, it seems to be probable that it is of Celtic derivation; and if this view be accepted, there is nothing at all extraordinary in its being recognized in the illuminated Irish gospels. Ireland, in the 6th and 7th centuries, was the great centre of art, civilization and literature; and it is only reasonable to suppose that there would be intercourse between the Irish Christians and those of the west of Britain, during the time that the Romano-Celts, or Brit-Welsh, were being slowly pushed westwards by the heathen English invader. Proof of such an intercourse we find in the brief notice of the _Annales Cambriae_, in which Gildas, the Brit-Welsh historian, is stated to have sailed over to Ireland in the year A.D. 565. It is by no means improbable that about this time there was a Brit-Welsh migration into Ireland, as well as into Brittany. Objects with these designs found in Germany are probably directly or indirectly due to the Irish missionaries, who spread Christianity through those regions. The early Christian art in Ireland grew out of the late Celtic, and is to a great extent free from the influence of Rome, which is stamped on the Brit-Welsh art of the same age in this country.

Several other ornaments with enamel deserve especial notice. The enamel, composed of red, blue and yellow, has been inserted into the hollows in the bronze, and then heated so as to form a close union with it. They are of the same design as those which have been met with in late Roman tumuli in this country, and in places which are mainly in the north. They all belong to a class named late Celtic by Franks, and are considered by him to be of British manufacture. This view is supported by the only reference to the art of enamelling furnished by the classical writers. Philostratus, a Greek sophist in the court of Julia Domna, the wife of the emperor Severus, writes, "It is said that the barbarians living in the ocean pour these colours (those of horse-trappings) on heated bronze, and that these adhere, grow as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them." It is worthy of remark that, since the emperor Severus built the wall which bears his name, marched in person against the Caledonians, and died at York, the account of the enamels may have reached Philostratus from the very district in which the Victoria Cave is situated.

Associated with these were bronze ornaments inlaid with silver, and miscellaneous iron articles, among which was a Roman key. Remains of this kind have been met with in the Albert and Kelko caves in the neighbourhood, in that of Dowkerbottom near Arncliffe, in that of Kirkhead on the northern shore of Morecambe Bay, in Poole's Cavern near Buxton, and in Thor's Cave near Ashbourne, and over a wide area ranging from Yorkshire and the Lake district southwards into Somerset and Devon.

_List of Principal Animals and Objects found in Brit-Welsh
Strata in Caves._

Thor's Cave.----------------------+
Poole's Cavern.------------------+ |
Kirkhead.--------------+ | |
Dowkerbottom.----------+ | | |
Kelko.------+ | | | |
Victoria.--+ | | | | |
| | | | | |
+---------------------------------------+-|-+-|-+-|-+-|-+-|-+-|-+
| Animals. | v | v | v | v | v | v |
+---------------------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|DOMESTIC-- | | | | | | |
| _Canis familiaris_. Dog | X | X | X | X | X | ? |
| _Sus scrofa_. Pig | X | X | X | X | X | ? |
| _Equus caballus_. Horse | X | X | X | X | X | ? |
| _Bos longifrons_. Celtic short-horn | X | X | X | X | X | ? |
| _Capra hircus_. Goat | X | X | X | X | X | ? |
| | | | | | | |
|WILD-- | | | | | | |
| _Canis vulpes_. Fox | X | | X | X | X | ? |
| _Meles taxus_. Badger | X | | X | | | X |
| _Cervus elaphus_. Stag | X | | X | X | X | ? |
| _Cervus capreolus_. Roe | X | | X | X | | ? |
| | | | | | | |
| Roman coins, or imitations | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Enamelled ornaments, in bronze | X | X | X | X | | |
| Bronze ornaments, inlaid with silver | X | X | X | | X | |
| Iron articles | X | X | X | | X | X |
| Samian ware | X | | X | | X | X |
| Black ware | X | X | X | | X | X |
| Bone spoon fibulae | X | X | X | | | |
| Bone combs | X | X | X | | | X |
+---------------------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+

It is obvious in all these cases that men accustomed to luxury and refinement were compelled, by the pressure of some great calamity, to flee for refuge to caves with whatever they could transport thither of their property. The number of spindle-whorls and personal ornaments imply that they were accompanied by their families. We may also infer that they were cut off from the civilization to which they had been accustomed, because in some cases they extemporized spindle-whorls out of fragments of Samian ware, instead of using those which were expressly manufactured for the purpose. Why the caves were inhabited is satisfactorily explained by an appeal to contemporary history. In the pages of Gildas, in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and in the _Annales Cambriae_, we have a graphic picture of that long war of invasion by which the inhabitants of the old Roman province of Britannia were driven back by the Jutes, Angles and Saxons, who crossed over with their families and household stuff. Slowly, and in the chances of a war which extended through three centuries, they were gradually pushed back into Cumberland, Wales and West Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. While this war was going on the coinage became debased and Roman coins afforded the patterns for the small bronze minimi, which are to be met with equally in these caves and in the ruins of Roman cities. As the tide of war rolled to the west, the English tongue and, until towards the close of the struggle, the worship of Thor and Odin supplanted the British tongue and the Christian faith, and a rude barbarism replaced what was left of the Roman civilization in the island. It is to this period that relics of this kind in the caves must be assigned. They are traces of the anarchy of those times, and complete the picture of the desolation of Britain, revealed by the ashes of the cities and villas that were burnt by the invader. They prove that the vivid account given by Gildas of the straits to which his countrymen were reduced was literally true.

The shrines of Zeus in the Idaean and Dictaean caves have been explored by Halbher and Orsi (_Antichita dell' antro de Zeus Ideo_) and by Arthur Evans and Hogarth (_Journal of Hellenic Studies_). These discoveries prove that the cult of Zeus began among the Mycenaean peoples some 2000 years B.C. according to Evans, and was practised far down into the later Greek times. They show that the Greeks are indebted to the Mycenaean peoples not only for their art, but for the chief of their divinities.

AUTHORITIES.--1. Britain: Boyd Dawkins, _Cave-hunting_ (1874); _Early
Man_ (1880); Mattel, _Irlande et cavernes anglaises_ (1897); Buckland,
_Reliquiae Diluvianae_ (1821); _Brit. Assoc. Reports_ (1860-1875);
_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ (1870-1876); _Quart. Geol. Journ._
(1860-1875); Pengelly, _Trans. Devonshire Association_. 2. The
European Continent: Martel, _Les Abimes_ (1894); Cartailhac and
Breuil, _L'Anthropologie_, xv., xvi.; Lartet and Christy, _Reliquiae
Aquitanicae; Internat. Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology_; Marcel de
Serres, _Les Ossemens fossiles de Lunel Viel_; Dupont, _L'Homme
pendant les ages de la pierre dans les environs de Dinant-sur-Meuse_;
Schmerling, _Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les
cavernes de Liege_; Merk, _Excavations at Kesserloch_, transl. J.E.
Lee (1876). For the chief American caves, see LURAY CAVERN, MAMMOTH
CAVE, WYANDOTTE CAVE, COLOSSAL CAVERN, JACOB'S CAVERN. (W. B. D.)

CAVEA, the Latin name given to the subterranean cells in which the wild beasts were confined prior to the combats in the Roman arena. The term is sometimes applied to the amphitheatre (q.v.) itself.

CAVEAT (Latin for "let him beware," from _cavere_), in law, a notice given by the party interested (caveator) to the proper officer of a court of justice to prevent the taking of a certain step without warning. It is entered in connexion with dealings in land registered in the land registry, with the grant of marriage licences, to prevent the issuing of a lunacy commission, to stay the probate of a will, letters of administration, &c. Caveat is also a term used in United States patent law (see PATENTS).

_Caveat emptor_ ("let the buyer beware") is a maxim which implies that the responsibility for making a bad bargain over a purchase rests on the purchaser. In an ordinary contract for the sale of goods, there is no implied warranty or condition as to the quality or fitness for any particular purpose of the goods supplied, with certain exceptions, and, therefore, the buyer takes at his own risk. The maxim does not apply (a) where the buyer, expressly or by implication, makes known to the seller the particular purpose for which the goods are required, so as to show that the buyer relies on the seller's skill or judgment, and that the goods are of a description which it is in the course of the seller's business to supply; (b) where goods are bought by description from a seller who deals in goods of that description, for there is an implied condition that the goods are of merchantable quality, though if the buyer has actually examined the goods, there is no implied condition as regards defects which the examination ought to have revealed; (c) where the usage of trade annexes an implied warranty or condition to the goods as to their quality or fitness for a particular purpose. The maxim of _caveat emptor_ is said to owe its origin to the fact that in early times sales of goods took place principally in market overt. (See further SALE OF GOODS.)

CAVEDONE, JACOPO (1577-1660), Italian painter, born at Sassuolo in the Modenese, was educated in the school of the Caracci, and under them painted in the churches of Bologna. His principal works are the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Four Doctors," and the "Last Supper"; and more especially the "Virgin and Child in Glory," with San Petronio and other saints, painted in 1614, and now in the Bolognese Academy. Cavedone became an assistant to Guido Reni in Rome; his art was generally of a subdued undemonstrative character, with rich Titianesque colouring. In his declining years his energies broke down after his wife had been accused of witchcraft, and after the death of a cherished son. He died in extreme poverty, in a stable at Bologna.

CAVENDISH, GEORGE (1500-1562?), English writer, the biographer of Cardinal Wolsey, was the elder son of Thomas Cavendish, clerk of the pipe in the exchequer, and his wife, Alice Smith of Padbrook Hall. He was probably born at his father's manor of Cavendish, in Suffolk. Later the family resided in London, in the parish of St Alban's, Wood Street, where Thomas Cavendish died in 1524. Shortly after this event George married Margery Kemp, of Spains Hall, an heiress, and the niece of Sir Thomas More. About 1527 he entered the service of Cardinal Wolsey as gentleman-usher, and for the next three years he was divided from his wife, children and estates, in the closest personal attendance on the great man. Cavendish was wholly devoted to Wolsey's interests, and also he saw in this appointment an opportunity to gratify his master-passion, a craving "to see and be acquainted with strangers, in especial with men in honour and authority." He was faithful to his master in disgrace, and showed the courage of the "loyal servitor." It is plain that he enjoyed Wolsey's closest confidence to the end, for after the cardinal's death George Cavendish was called before the privy council and closely examined as to Wolsey's latest acts and words. He gave his evidence so clearly and with so much natural dignity, that he won the applause of the hostile council, and the praise of being "a just and diligent servant." He was not allowed to suffer in pocket by his fidelity to his master, but retired, as it would seem, a wealthy man to his estate of Glemsford, in West Suffolk, in 1530. He was only thirty years of age, but his appetite for being acquainted with strange acts and persons was apparently sated, for we do not hear of his engaging in any more adventures. It is not to be doubted that Cavendish had taken down notes of Wolsey's conversation and movements, for many years passed before his biography was composed. At length, in 1557, he wrote it out in its final form. It was not, however, possible to publish it in the author's lifetime, but it was widely circulated in MS. Evidently one of these MSS. fell into Shakespeare's hands, for that poet made use of it in his _King Henry VIII._, although it is excessive to say, as Singer has done, that Shakespeare "merely put Cavendish's language into verse." The book was first printed in 1641, in a garbled text, and under the title of _The Negotiations of Thomas Wolsey_. The genuine text, from contemporary MSS., was given to the world in 1810, and more fully in 1815. Until that time it was believed that the book was the composition of George Cavendish's younger brother William, the founder of Chatsworth, who also was attached to Wolsey. Joseph Hunter proved this to be impossible, and definitely asserted the claim of George. The latter is believed to have died at Glemsford in or about 1562. The intrinsic value of Cavendish's _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_ has long been perceived, for it is the sole authentic record of a multitude of events highly important in a particularly interesting section of the history of England. Its importance as a product of biographical literature was first emphasized by Bishop Creighton, who insisted over and over again on the claim of Cavendish to be recognized as the earliest of the great English biographers and an individual writer of particular charm and originality. He writes with simplicity and with a certain vivid picturesqueness, rarely yielding to the rhetorical impulses which governed the ordinary prose of his age. (E. G.)

CAVENDISH, HENRY (1731-1810), English chemist and physicist, elder son of Lord Charles Cavendish, brother of the 3rd duke of Devonshire, and Lady Anne Grey, daughter of the duke of Kent, was born at Nice in October 1731. He was sent to school at Hackney in 1742, and in 1749 entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, which he left in 1753, without taking a degree. Until he was about forty he seems to have enjoyed a very moderate allowance from his father, but in the latter part of his life he was left a fortune which made him one of the richest men of his time. He lived principally at Clapham Common, but he had also a town-house in Bloomsbury, while his library was in a house in Dean Street, Soho; and there he used to attend on appointed days to lend the books to men who were properly vouched for. So methodical was he that he never took down a volume for his own use without entering it in the loan-book. He was a regular attendant at the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he became a fellow in 1760, and he dined every Thursday with the club composed of its members. Otherwise he had little intercourse with society; indeed, his chief object in life seems to have been to avoid the attention of his fellows. With his relatives he had little intercourse, and even Lord George Cavendish, whom he made his principal heir, he saw only for a few minutes once a year. His dinner was ordered daily by a note placed on the hall-table, and his women servants were instructed to keep out of his sight on pain of dismissal. In person he was tall and rather thin; his dress was old-fashioned and singularly uniform, and was inclined to be shabby about the times when the precisely arranged visits of his tailor were due. He had a slight hesitation in his speech, and his air of timidity and reserve was almost ludicrous. He was never married. He died at Clapham on the 24th of February 1810, leaving funded property worth L700,000, and a landed estate of L8000 a year, together with canal and other property, and L50,000 at his bankers.

Cavendish's scientific work is distinguished for the wideness of its range and for its extraordinary exactness and accuracy. The papers he himself published form an incomplete record of his researches, for many of the results he obtained only became generally known years after his death; yet in spite of the absence of anything approaching self-advertisement he acquired a very high reputation within his own country and abroad, recognized by the Institute of France in 1803 when it chose him as one of its eight foreign associates. Arsenic formed the subject of his first recorded investigation, on which he was engaged at least as early as 1764, and in 1766 he began those communications to the Royal Society on the chemistry of gases, which are among his chief titles to fame. The first (_Phil. Trans._, 1766) consists of "Three papers containing experiments on Factitious Airs," dealing mostly with "inflammable air" (hydrogen), which he was the first to recognize as a distinct substance, and "fixed air" (carbon dioxide). He determined the specific gravity of these gases with reference to common air, investigated the extent to which they are absorbed by various liquids, and noted that common air containing one part in nine by volume of fixed air is no longer able to support combustion, and that the air produced by fermentation and putrefaction has properties identical with those of fixed air obtained from marble. In the following year he published a paper on the analysis of one of the London pump-waters (from Rathbone Place, Oxford Street), which is closely connected with the memoirs just mentioned, since it shows that the calcareous matter in that water is held in solution by the "fixed air" present and can be precipitated by lime. Electrical studies seem next to have engaged his attention, and in 1771 and 1772 he read to the Royal Society his "Attempt to explain some of the principal phenomena of electricity by an elastic fluid," which was followed in 1775 by an "Attempt to imitate the effects of the Torpedo (a fish allied to the ray)" (_Phil. Trans._, 1776). But these two memoirs contain only a part of the electrical researches he carried out between 1771 and 1781, and many more were found after his death in a number of sealed packets of papers. The contents of these for a long time remained unknown, but ultimately by permission of the duke of Devonshire, to whom they belonged, they were edited by James Clerk Maxwell and published in 1879 by the Cambridge University Press as the _Electrical Researches of the Hon. Henry Cavendish_. About 1777 or 1778 he resumed his pneumatic inquiries, though he published nothing on the subject till 1783. In that year he described a new eudiometer to the Royal Society and detailed observations he had made to determine whether or not the atmosphere is constant in composition; after testing the air on nearly 60 different days in 1781 he could find in the proportion of oxygen no difference of which he could be sure, nor could he detect any sensible variation at different places. Two papers on "Experiments with Airs," printed in the _Phil. Trans._ for 1784 and 1785, contain his great discoveries of the compound nature of water and the composition of nitric acid. Starting from an experiment, narrated by Priestley, in which John Warltire fired a mixture of common air and hydrogen by electricity, with the result that there was a diminution of volume and a deposition of moisture, Cavendish burnt about two parts of hydrogen with five of common air, and noticed that almost all the hydrogen and about one-fifth of the common air lost their elasticity and were condensed into a dew which lined the inside of the vessel employed. This dew he judged to be pure water. In another experiment he fired, by the electric spark, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen (dephlogisticated air), and found that the resulting water contained nitric acid, which he argued must be due to the nitrogen present as an impurity in the oxygen ("phlogisticated air with which it [the dephlogisticated air] is debased"). In the 1785 paper he proved the correctness of this supposition by showing that when electric sparks are passed through common air there is a shrinkage of volume owing to the nitrogen uniting with the oxygen to form nitric acid. Further, remarking that little was known of the phlogisticated part of our atmosphere, and thinking it might fairly be doubted "whether there are not in reality many different substances confounded together by us under the name of phlogisticated air," he made an experiment to determine whether the whole of a given portion of nitrogen (phlogisticated air) of the atmosphere could be reduced to nitric acid. He found that a small fraction, not more than 1/120th part, resisted the change, and in this residue he doubtless had a sample of the inert gas argon which was only recognized as a distinct entity more than a hundred years later. His last chemical paper, published in 1788, on the "Conversion of a mixture of dephlogisticated and phlogisticated air into nitrous acid by the electric spark," describes measures he took to authenticate the truth of the experiment described in the 1785 paper, which had "since been tried by persons of distinguished ability in such pursuits without success." It may be noted here that, while Cavendish adhered to the phlogistic doctrine, he did not hold it with anything like the tenacity that characterized Priestley; thus, in his 1784 paper on "Experiments on Air," he remarks that not only the experiments he is describing, but also "most other phenomena of nature seem explicable as well, or nearly as well," upon the Lavoisierian view as upon the commonly believed principle of phlogiston, and he goes on to give an explanation in terms of the antiphlogistic hypothesis.

Early in his career Cavendish took up the study of heat, and had he promptly published his results he might have anticipated Joseph Black as the discoverer of latent heat and of specific heat. But he made no reference to his work till 1783, when he presented to the Royal Society some "Observations on Mr Hutchins's experiments for determining the degree of cold at which quicksilver freezes." This paper, with others published in 1786 and 1788, is concerned with the phenomena attending the freezing of various substances, and is noteworthy because in it he expresses doubt of the supposition that "the heat of bodies is owing to their containing more or less of a substance called the matter of heat," and inclines to Newton's opinion that it "consists in the internal motion of the particles of bodies." His "Account of the Meteorological Apparatus used at the Royal Society's House" (_Phil. Trans._, 1776) contains remarks on the precautions necessary in making and using thermometers, a subject which is continued in the following year in a report signed by him and six others.

Cavendish's last great achievement was his famous series of experiments to determine the density of the earth (_Phil. Trans._, 1798). The apparatus he employed was devised by the Rev. John Michell, though he had the most important parts reconstructed to his own designs; it depended on measuring the attraction exercised on a horizontal bar, suspended by a vertical wire and bearing a small lead ball at each end, by two large masses of lead. (See GRAVITATION.) The figure he gives for the specific gravity of the earth is 5.48, water being 1, but in fact the mean of the 29 results he records works out at 5.448. Other publications of his later years dealt with the height of an aurora seen in 1784 (_Phil. Trans._, 1790), the civil year of the Hindus (_Id._, 1792), and an improved method of graduating astronomical instruments (_Id._, 1809). Cavendish also had a taste for geology, and made several tours in England for the purpose of gratifying it.

A life by George Wilson (1818-1859), printed for the Cavendish Society
in 1851, contains an account of his writings, both published and
unpublished, together with a critical inquiry into the claims of all
the alleged discoverers of the composition of water. Some of his
instruments are preserved in the Royal Institution, London, and his
name is commemorated in the Cavendish Physical Laboratory at
Cambridge, which was built by his kinsman the 7th duke of Devonshire.

CAVENDISH [CANDISH], THOMAS (1555?-1592), the third circumnavigator of the globe, was born at Trimley St Martin, Suffolk. On quitting Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (without a degree), he almost ruined himself by his extravagance as a courtier. To repair his fortune he turned to maritime and colonial enterprise, and in 1585 accompanied Sir Richard Grenville to America. Soon returning to England, he undertook an elaborate imitation of Drake's great voyage. On the 21st of July 1586, he sailed from Plymouth with 123 men in three vessels, only one of which (the "Desire," of 140 tons) came home. By way of Sierra Leone, the Cape Verde Islands and C. Frio in Brazil, he coasted down to Patagonia (where he discovered "Port Desire," his only important contribution to knowledge), and passing through Magellan's Straits, fell upon the Spanish settlements and shipping on the west coast of South and Central America and of Mexico. Among his prizes were nineteen vessels of worth, and especially the treasure-galleon, the "Great St Anne," which he captured off Cape St Lucas, the southern extremity of California (November 14, 1587). After this success he struck across the Pacific for home; touched at the Ladrones, Philippines, Moluccas and Java; rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and arrived again at Plymouth (September 9-10, 1588), having circumnavigated the globe in two years and fifty days. It is said that his sailors were clothed in silk, his sails were damask, and his top-mast covered with cloth of gold. Yet by 1591 he was again in difficulties, and planned a fresh American and Pacific venture. John Davis (q.v.) accompanied him, but the voyage (undertaken with five vessels) was an utter failure, much of the fault lying with Cavendish himself, who falsely accused Davis, with his last breath, of deserting him (May 20, 1592). He died and was buried at sea, on the way home, in the summer of 1592.

See Hakluyt's _Principal Navigations_, (a) edition of 1589, p. 809
(N.H.'s narrative of the voyage of 1586-1588); (b) edition of
1599-1600, vol. iii. pp. 803-825 (Francis Pretty's narrative of the
same); (c) edition of 1599-1600, vol. iii. pp. 251-253 (on the venture
of 1585); (d) edition of 1599-1600, vol. iii. pp. 845-852 (John Lane's
narrative of the last voyage, of 1591-1592); also _Stationers'
Registers_ (Arber), vol. ii. pp. 505-509; the Molyneux Globe of 1592,
in the library of the Middle Temple, London, and the Ballads in _Biog.
Brit._, vol. i. p. 1196.