44 ON KAINS CAVE, LONGCLIFFE, DERBYSHIRE. 



used as a perma7ie7ii residence, more probable is it, that it was again 

 and again temporarily occupied by passing hunters, fugitives, and 

 wanderers of all sorts, both before and after it was used for 

 sepulchral purposes. 



It will be seen from what has been said above, that so far the 

 " finds " of Rains Cave carry us back to the time when history loses 

 itself in the mist of fable, and to the dense gloom of pre-historic 

 time beyond, when geology and archa;ology become our only guides. 

 But farther back, how far we cannot say, is that as yet but dimly 

 descried condition of things, known geologically as the Pleistocene 

 period. This period was a cycle of mighty confluent glaciers which 

 swept over all north-western Europe, rounding its hills, deepening its 

 valleys, and grinding out rock basins, with warm intervals, in the 

 sub-tropical portions of which the hippopotamus and rhinoceros 

 wallowed in the marshy valleys, and elephants (of both living and extinct 

 species) roamed amid forest glade and jungle, while cave-lions and 

 hyaenas devoured their prey in the dark recesses of the caves. But 

 in the more temperate conditions which immediately preceded and 

 succeeded these warmer times, these were replaced with vast herds 

 of bison and urus, migrating annually, north and south, across an 

 unbroken alternation of hill and dale, forest and prairie, now 

 represented by Spain, France, and England ; and the cave-lion and 

 hysena gave place to the cave-bear. But as the northern glaciers 

 approached, these in their turn were replaced by the unwieldy 

 mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, the musk sheep, arctic fox, rein- 

 deer, and glutton. It was some time during this period, whether 

 before or during these warm intervals of the epoch of glaciation it is 

 difficult to say, that Palceolithic man found his way into the west. 

 The peculiar flint and bone implements, and the rough but boldly 

 scratched drawings of the animals (now extinct) that he hunted, 

 and occasionally the bones of his own body, with those of the 

 heterogeneous crowd of animals above-mentioned, in many a cave 

 and many a river gravel, are the almost sole mementos to us of tlie 

 world in which he lived and moved. 



A bone cave, now that its hieroglyphics are interpreted, is to the 

 archaeologist what an ancient record or inscription is to the historian 



