KENT'S HOLE. 315 



east of Devonshire,* and in his description of Kent's Hole, he 

 says that " human remains and works of art, such as arrow- 

 heads and knives of flint, occur in all parts of the cave, and 

 throughout the entire thickness of the clay : and no distinction 

 founded on condition, distribution or relative position, can be 

 observed, whereby the human can be separated from the other 

 reliquiae," which included bones of the " elephant, rhinoceros, 

 ox, deer, horse, bear, hyaena, and a feline animal of large size." 

 The value, he truly adds, " of such a statement must rest on 

 the care with which a collector may have explored. I must 

 therefore state that my own researches were constantly con- 

 ducted in parts of the cave which had never been disturbed, 

 and in every instance the bones were procured from beneath 

 a thick covering of stalagmite ; so far, then, the bones and 

 works of man must have been introduced into the cave before 

 the flooring of stalagmite had been formed." Notwithstanding 

 the high authority of Mr. Godwin- Austen, these statements 

 attracted little attention; and the very similar assertions 

 made by Mr. Vivian, in a paper read before the Geological 

 Society, were considered so improbable that the memoir con- 

 taining them was not published. 



They have, however, been completely confirmed by the 

 systematic examination which was instituted by the British 

 Association. Worked flints were found less abundantly in 

 the lower layers than near the surface, but several were dis- 

 covered under circumstances which left no doubt that they 

 were deposited at the same time as the bones of the large 

 mammalia. The researches were carried on by a Committee, 

 consisting of Sir C. Lyell, Mr. Busk, Mr. Evans, Prof. Phillips, 

 Mr. Vivian, Mr. Pengelly, and myself, and the work was 

 under the more immediate superintendence of Mr. Pengelly 

 and Mr. Vivian. 



In May, 1858, Dr. Falconer called the attention of the 



* Transactions of the Geol. Soc., Ser. 2, vol. vi. p. 433. 



