MENDIP BONE CAVERNS. 41 



recent period, and the easy access through the fissures in 

 the rocks would account for their occurrence in these caves. 

 I mention these only as supplying materials for the picture 

 of animal life as it existed in those days. 



I will not attempt to fill up the details in this picture. 

 Having supplied you with the facts, I must leave each one 

 to imagine the altered aspect which the forest trees and 

 tropical foliage of that period would give to our hüls and 

 dales. That these features of vegetable life were the ac- 

 companiments of these particular forms of animal life in 

 those ages, as well as in this present age, is more than pro- 

 bable, only with such modifications as would account for 

 the appearance of the hazel and the alder, found in the ex- 

 cavations at Taunton. 



The picture thus realized may be novel and grand ; but 

 the actual living picture with which we are now favoured 

 in the Vale of Taunton Dean, and in the dells of Somerset, 

 is nevertheless far better, and more to be desired. Deeply 

 as I am interested in this collection, so much so that I 

 would almost deem it sacrilege wilfully to destroy a single 

 bone, yet I am free to admit that I have considerable satis- 

 faction in knowing that these are the bones of the dead, 

 not of the living. But " de mortuis nil nisi bonum." They 

 did their work in their day. Let us strive to do ours, and 

 so do our work in advancing the Archaeology and Natural 

 History of our land, that Coming generations may not des- 

 pise our labours, nor rejoice in that we are gone. 



VOL. VII., 1856-7, TART II. 



