SPELEOLOGY, OR CAVE EXPLORATION. 255 



European skull is ninety-three inches in bulk." * The author was 

 informed by Mr. Lucien Carr, of the Ethnological Museum of 

 Harvard University, that the capacity of the Peruvian skulls was 

 about one hundred centimetres smaller than that of the skulls of any 

 other people living in America at the same time. Yet that small- 

 headed people was the most highly civilized of all. 



♦*♦■ 



SPELEOLOGY, OK CAVE EXPLORATION, f 



Br M. E. A. MAETEL. 



THE not very graceful word speleology was composed a few 

 years ago by M. Emile Riviere out of Greek elements, as a 

 translation of the German Hbhlenkunde, to signify the study of 

 caves. The study claims a place among the sciences, and is, I believe, 

 able to justify its claim. Caves have been subjects of interest and 

 curiosity in all times and countries. In the primitive ages, when 

 palaeolithic man was obliged to defend himself against the large 

 Quaternary wild beasts, and did not yet know how to construct cabins, 

 he lived in the most inaccessible caves, or those easiest to close, which 

 he could find. Afterward, when man had advanced in civilization 

 to the neolithic stage, and had somewhat improved tools and arms, 

 having learned to build huts and villages, caves became simply burial 

 places. In the historical periods of antiquity they were transformed 

 into pagan sanctuaries or temporary hiding places in times of revolt, 

 civil war, or invasion. Down to the middle ages and the renascence, 

 they shared this function with abandoned quarries. Through these 

 changes they gradually became objects of popular fear and absurd 

 legend. I have nearly everywhere in France found legendary and 

 profound belief in some monstrous basilisk or dragon in the depths 

 of dark caverns, guarding immense treasures; and woe to the rash 

 adventurer who tried to steal these riches! 



In short, caves have suffered their vicissitudes; their use as habi- 

 tations seems to be inversely proportioned to the degree of civiliza- 

 tion. The miserable aborigines of Australia have not yet quite aban- 

 doned them; and in France the present occupation of the grottoes 

 of Ezy, in the Eure, by some outcast families, who lead a sordid exist- 

 ence in them, indifferent to all social conventions, has recently been 

 cited as an extremely curious anthropological phenomenon. 



Science, too, has laid its hold on caves only within a little more 

 than a century; for it was not till 1774 that Esper recognized that 



* Eclectic Magazine, December 14, 1863, p. 428. 



f From an address before the Socidte des Amis des Sciences. 



