1874. in Kent’s Cavern. rae 
destruction and dislodgement of great portions of these, are 
the exponents. It may be true that the Breccia was 
introduced at a more rapid rate than the Cave-earth ; and, 
indeed, this is rendered not improbable by the great paucity 
of angular fragments of limestone, as well as of films of 
Stalagmite in the older deposit ; but this is probably more 
than neutralised by the immense thickness of the Crystalline 
or older Stalagmite as compared with that of the Granular or 
more modern; the former being in one chamber but little 
short of 12 feet, whilst the latter has in no instance much 
exceeded 5 feet. 
In short, and speaking for myself, however far back in 
antiquity the fabricators of the Cave-earth tools take their, 
stand, I cannot hesitate to place those of the implements of 
the Breccia as much further back. Many must remember, 
and perhaps few were surprised at, the alarm occasioned by 
the antiquity of man disclosed by the researches in Brixham 
Cavern, in 1858; and now, cavern researches, growing out of 
those just mentioned, appear to me to make an irresistible 
demand to have human antiquity in Britain at least doubled. 
Up to the present time, as the Cavern has disclosed more 
and more ancient men, it has shown that they were ruder 
and ruder as they withdrew into antiquity. The men of the 
Black Mould had a great variety of bone implements, they 
used spindle whorls, and made pottery, and smelted and 
compounded metals. The older men of the Cave-earth 
made a few bone tools, they used needles, and probably 
stitched skins together, and even perforated badgers’ teeth 
to enable them to be strung as necklaces or bracelets, but 
they had neither spindle whorls nor pottery, nor metals of 
any kind; their most powerful weapons were made of flakes 
of flint and chert, many of them symmetrically formed and 
carefully chipped, but it seems never to have occurred to 
them to increase their efficiency by polishing them. The 
still more ancient men of the Breccia have left behind them 
not even a single bone tool; they made implements of 
nodules, not flakes, of flint and chert; tools that were rude and 
massive, had but little regularity of outline, and were but 
roughly chipped. 
It has not been unusual to hear the men of the Cave- 
earth period spoken of as Primeval Men, or Aborigines of 
Devonshire ; the discovery of men of higher antiquity in the 
Same area is at once a proof that the names are inappro- 
priate, and a warning against applying them to even the men 
of the Breccia; for, though these are no doubt the oldest 
men yet known to us, they hint that further discoveries may 
yet be made. 
