CLOSE OF POST- PLIOCENE ADVENT OF MAN. 307 



tors. Lastly, in and upon the black mould are man 1 ? 

 fallen blocks from the roof of the cave. 



There can be no doubt that this cave and the neigh- 

 bouring one of Brixham have done very much to 

 impress the minds of British geologists with ideas of 

 the great antiquity of man, and they have, more than 

 any other Post-glacial monuments, shown the persis- 

 tence of some animals now extinct up to the human 

 age. Of precise data for determining time, they have, 

 however, given nothing. The only measures which 

 seed to have been applied, namely, the rate of 

 growth of stalagmite and the rate of erosion of the 

 neighbouring valleys, are, from the very sequence 

 of the deposits, obviously worthless; and the only 

 apparently available constant measure, namely, the 

 fall of blocks from the roof, seems not yet to have 

 been applied. We are therefore quite uncertain as to 

 the number of centuries involved in the filling of this 

 cave, and must remain so until a surer system of cal- 

 culation is adopted. We may, however, attempt to 

 sketch the series of events which it indicates. 



The animals found in Kent's Hole are all tf Post- 

 glacial/' They therefore inhabited the country after 

 it rose from the great Glacial submergence. Perhaps 

 the first colonists of the coasts of Devonshire in this 

 period were the cave bears, migrating on floating ice, 

 and subsisting, like the Arctic bear, and the black 

 bears of Anticosti, on fish, and on the garbage cast 

 up by the sea. They found Kent's Hole a sea- side 

 cavern, with perhaps some of its galleries still full of 



