152 Flint and Chert Implements (April, 
retreats are easily discovered by the animals’ footprints on 
the soil and turf. They are seen like steps of stairs leading 
from the pool in the direction of the den, being brought 
about by the individual always treading in the same track. 
Thus the patriarch or hermit bears spend their latter years 
in one situation, pursuing the even tenor of their ways to 
the little stream or pond below, and grassy slopes, to feed on 
the rank vegetation, returning regularly to the caverns, 
where they end their days.” 
5th. The deposits just described are obviously not only 
distinct, successive, and protracted terms in the Cavern 
chronology, but indicators of changes in the conditions of 
the geographical features of the immediately surrounding 
country, and of the relation of the Cavern to it. During the 
period of the Breccia there was a machinery capable of 
transporting from Lincombe hill, or Warberry hill, or both, 
or from some greater distance, fragments of dark red grit, 
varying in size from pieces four inches in mean diameter to 
mere sand, and lodging them in the Cavern. This so 
completely passed away that nothing was carried in; but 
the deposit, already there, was covered with a thick sheet 
of Crystalline Stalagmite obtained through the solution 
of portions of the limestone in the heart of which the 
Cavern lay. ‘This also ended: the stalagmite was broken 
up by some natural agency, apparently not by one effort, but 
by many in succession, and much of the Breccia was 
dislodged and carried out of the Cavern. This having in 
like manner come to a close, again a deposit was introduced ; 
but, instead of being dark red stones and sand, as in the 
former instance, it was a light red clay; and in it were 
embedded small fragments of limestone, which, from their 
angularity, could not have been rolled, but were in all 
probability supplied by the waste of the walls and roof of 
the Cavern itself. It contained also the bones of numerous 
species of mammals, and of these the remains of the hyzena 
were the most prevalent. 
Nor is the paleontology of the two periods less significant 
of physical charges. If the absence of any traces of the 
hyzena from the older deposit has been corre¢tly interpreted 
above, as signifying that the species was not then an 
occupant of Britain, it follows thatit was subsequently possible 
for him to arrive here, or, in other words, Britain had 
become connected by dry land with the Continent. In short, 
the facts point to the conclusion that the earliest Devonshire 
men known to us—the men of the Ursine, the Breccia 
period—saw this country an island as we see it, and that in 
