50 



IX. " On the Occurrence of Flint-implements, associated with 

 the Remains of Extinct Mammalia, in Undisturbed Beds of 

 a late Geological Period." By JOSEPH PRESTWICH, Esq., 

 F.R.S., F.G.S. &c. Received May 26, 1859. 



(Abstract.) 



The author commences by noticing how comparatively rare are 

 the cases even of the alleged discovery of the remains of man or of 

 his works in the various superficial drifts, notwithstanding the ex- 

 tent to which these deposits are worked ; and of these few cases so 

 many have been disproved, that man's non-existence on the earth 

 until after the latest geological changes, and the extinction of the 

 Mammoth, Tichorhine Rhinoceros, and other great mammals, had 

 come to be considered almost in the light of an established fact. 

 Instances, however, have from time to time occurred to throw some 

 doubt on this view, as the well-known cases of the human bones 

 found by Dr. Schmerling in a cavern near Liege, the remains of 

 man, instanced by M. Marcel de Serres and others in several caverns 

 in France, the flint-implements in Kent's Cave, and many more. 

 Some uncertainty, however, has always attached to cave-evidence, 

 from the circumstance that man has often inhabited such places at 

 a comparatively late period, and may have disturbed the original 

 cave-deposit ; or, after the period of his residence, the stalagmitic 

 floor may have been broken up by natural causes, and the remains 

 above and below it may have thus become mixed together, and 

 afterwards sealed up by a second floor of stalagmite. Such instances 

 of an imbedded broken stalagmitic floor are in fact known to occur ; 

 at the same time the author does not pretend to say that this will 

 explain all cases of intermixture in caves, but that it lessens the value 

 of the evidence from such sources. 



The subject has, however, been latterly revived, and the evidence 

 more carefully sifted by Dr. Falconer ; and his preliminary reports 

 on the Brixham Cave*, presented last year to the Royal Society, 

 announcing the carefully determined occurrence of worked flints 



* On the 4th of May, this year, Dr. Falconer further communicated to the Geo- 

 logical Society some similar facts, though singularly varied, recently discovered 

 by him in the Maccagnone Cave near Palermo. See Proc. Geol. Soc. 



