354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1865, by a most competent committee of the British Association, of a 

 large cavern in south Devonshire, near Torquay, called " Kent's Hole." 

 I have had the opportunity of personally studying the modes of pro- 

 cedure there under the guidance of Mr. Pengelly, secretary of the 

 committee, and can bear testimony to the scrujmlous care, the vigilant 

 watchfulness, and the great skill and knowledge with which the inves- 

 tigations are prosecuted. The following is a brief sketch of what has 

 been discovered in the course of the exploration : The bottom of the 

 cavern was found to be encumbered with huge blocks of limestone that 

 had become detached from the roof, between and under which was a 

 layer of vegetable mold of varying depths up to a foot or more. In 

 this layer were found objects of various periods, running back as far 

 as the times of the Roman occupation of the island. Below this came 

 a floor, a stalagmite of an average thickness of sixteen to twenty 

 inches, and underneath it a layer of cave-earth four feet deep, in which 

 were found objects of man's fabrication. Still lower they came upon 

 a second floor of stalagmite, which in some places had attained a thick- 

 ness as great as twelve feet. Below all came a breccia, in which were 

 found numerous teeth and bones of the cave-bear, and with them three 

 undoubted flint instruments. Now, in one part of the cavern there is 

 a huge boss of stalagmite rising from the floor, and on it is inscribed 

 "Robert Hedges, of Ireland, February 20, 1688." For nearly two 

 hundred years the process of the formation of stalagmite appears to 

 have been going on, and still the letters are now only covered by a 

 film of not more than one twentieth of an inch in thickness. Even 

 granting that the deposition of stalagmite may have proceeded much 

 more rapidly under former conditions than at present, when more 

 water and more carbonic acid may have penetrated the cavern, still it 

 is evident what a lapse of time is required to account for the forma- 

 tion of such a mass of material as we have here. Nor can accident or 

 fraud be invoked to explain the presence of these relics of man, under 

 the circumstances in which these have been found. The work was 

 executed under the daily supervision of the committee, and by trust- 

 worthy laborers, and no intermingling of objects falling from a higher 

 level ; no burying of them in later times in excavations made in an 

 older deposit ; no attempt at making gain from forged articles palmed 

 off upon credulous collectors in this case is possible. Like results have 

 been reached by the same committee in the " Brixhaw Cave," on the 

 opposite side of Torbay, which was purchased and thoroughly ex- 

 plored by them immediately after its accidental discovery in 1858, 

 through its roof having been broken into in quarrying. In this case 

 the additional guarantee was afforded for the genuineness of the con- 

 tents, that its exploration was almost contemporaneous with its discov- 

 ery. Space will not allow more than an allusion to the laborious and 

 fruitful researches of the late Messrs. Lartet and Christy in the caves 

 and the rock-shelters of the valley of the Dordogne and its affluents, 



