396 



NATURE 



[December io, 1914 



the hyaena den, and afterwards transferred his 

 labours to the main caverns which open at the 

 head of the Wookey Hole ravine. In the 

 vestibule or passage leading to the first of 

 the three great caverns (see Fig, i) he 

 found a deposit on the floor amounting in 

 thickness to nearly six feet. The main part of 

 this work is an account of t<he exploration of this 

 deposit. It is clear from the author's account 

 that the vestibule or entrance had been used as a 

 habitation by man during two periods. The more 

 superficial or recent layers contained pottery and 

 implements belonging to the period of the Roman 

 occupation ; the deeper strata were marked by 

 objects belonging to a pre-Roman period — one 

 which reaches back, in Mr. Balch's opinion, to 



ancient Bretons. He elaborates a tragic short 

 story of a goat-herd to explain the discovery of 

 part of a human skeleton, the skulls of two goats, 

 an earthenware pot, a tethering stake, and a 

 deposit of goat manure in the strata and recesses 

 of the cave floor (see Fig. 2). 



Mr. Balch suspects the cave-dwellers of canni- 

 balism (i) because stray human bones were found 

 in the strata of the cave, mixed with animal bones, 

 and (2) because some early writers have alleged 

 that the ancient British were cannibals. None of 

 the bones showed the least mark of human work- 

 manship — of knife or of saw ; the fractures which 

 Mr. Balch figures are those which may be seen 

 in human bones dug from modern graves — frac- 

 tures produced by the grave digger's spade. If 



Fig. I — Wookey Hole Cavern. Plan and Section by H. E. Balch and R. D. R. Troup, 1912. From " Wookey Hole: its Caves and Cave Dwellers." 



about 400 B.C. The pottery, implements, orna- 

 ments, and objects of culture, found in the deeper 

 strata lare identical with those revealed by the 

 investigations at Glastonbury. It is evident that 

 the cave was used as a habitation when the neigh- 

 bouring lake-village of Glastonbury was in 

 existence. 



Mr. Balch describes and figures in full detail 

 all the traces left by these ancient pre-Roman 

 inhabitants of Somerset. He has brought his 

 imagination to bear on all the details and sought 

 to reconstruct the home life of the cave-dwellers 

 —ably seconded by the pencil and brush of Mr. 

 John Hassall. He pictures the arrival of these 

 cave-dwellers from Brittany, in order to explain 

 the similarity of their cave pottery to that of the 



NO. 2^<.±. VOL. Q41 



human bones are found scattered in the floor- 

 strata of a British cave there is no need to sus- 

 pect our ancestors of cannibalism. Nothing is 

 better known than that Neolithic people used 

 caves as sepulchres. We know, too, that rabbits 

 and all sorts of animals which frequent caves, 

 scatter the bones of skeletons embedded in the 

 floor. Mr. Balch himself discovered a small 

 cave in the heights above the Wookey Hole 

 ravine,; he relates how the human remains on the 

 floor of that cave had been dismembered and 

 spread by the animals frequenting the cave. No ; 

 Mr. Balch must bring more convincing evidence 

 to convict the cave-dwellers of Wookey Hole of 

 cannibalism. 



Mr. Balch, with justice, dedicates his book ta^ 



