SKETCH OF WILLIAM PENGELLY. 119 



Roman Catholic priest, began a four years' exploration of the cave 

 in 1825, and prepared a narrative of his work, which was not pub- 

 lished for several years after his death, having been lost, and found 

 by Pengclly after a long search. He showed that the cave had been 

 inhabited, practically at the same time, by man and various extinct 

 animals; but the antiquity of man not being yet a live subject, little 

 regard Avas paid to his evidences. With a grant of a hundred pounds 

 from the British Association, the work was begun under the direc- 

 tion of a committee of which Pengelly was the leading spirit and 

 the working member. It opened a new chapter in his life, his daugh- 

 ter says, " for he not only superintended the exploration of the cav- 

 ern, but undertook its entire management, throwing himself, heart 

 and soul, into the numerous duties which it entailed. The labor was 

 arduous, and severely taxed his energies for fifteen years; but it 

 was a congenial employment, and most faithfully performed. . . . 

 After undertaking the exploration, Pengelly became such an enthu- 

 siast in the progress made that, when in Torquay, he never (unless 

 prevented by illness) failed on a single week day to visit the cavern, 

 while he devoted many hours at home in the examination of the speci- 

 mens exhumed. He even abridged his short holidays, and all idea of 

 living in London was abandoned on this account." In the investiga- 

 tion, the surface accumulations having been removed and preserved 

 for examination, the floor of granular stalagmite was stripped off, so 

 as to lay bare the cave earth, and this was dug out ultimately to a 

 depth of four feet in a series of prismatic blocks, a yard long and a 

 foot square in section, layer by layer. This material was examined 

 in the cave by candlelight, then at the door by daylight. A box was 

 appropriated to each " yard," in which all the objects of interest found 

 in that particular earth were put. The boxes, with the record of 

 what they contained, were sent daily to Pengelly, who cleaned the 

 articles and repacked them, and kept regular records of his day's 

 works. Other materials were dealt with with similar thoroughness 

 in ways according to their nature. " Whatever was discovered be- 

 neath the stalagmite flooring must have been sealed up by it for, at the 

 very least, two thousand years, probably for a much longer time." 

 The exploration was completed June 19, 1880. The more than seven- 

 ty-three hundred prisms of material which proved productive yielded, 

 besides fifty thousand bones examined by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, nu- 

 merous implements, including those of bone, the work of man. Two 

 deposits were evident, one of " cave earth," and one of breccia be- 

 neath it. A glance at the implements from them showed that they 

 were very dissimilar. Those from the breccia were more massive 

 and ruder in every way than the others, and none of them were of 

 bone. " In short, the stone tools, though both sets were unpolished 



