308 THE STOEY OP THE EARTH AND MAN. 



water, and filling with breccia, with, which the bones 

 of dead bears became mixed. As the land rose, these 

 creatures for the most part betook themselves to lower 

 levels, and in process of time the cavern stood upon a 

 hill-side, perhaps several hundreds of feet above the 

 sea ; and the mountain torrents, their beds not yet 

 emptied of glacial detritus, washed into it stones and 

 mud and carcases of animals of many species which 

 had now swarmed across the plains elevated out of the 

 sea, and multiplied in the land. This was the time of 

 the cave earth ; and before its deposit was completed, 

 though how long before, a confused and often-dis- 

 turbed bed of this kind cannot tell, man himself seems 

 to have been added to the inhabitants of the British 

 land. In pursuit of game he sometimes ascended the 

 valleys beyond the cavern, or even penetrated into its 

 outer chambers ; or perhaps there were even in 

 those days rude and savage hill-men, inhabiting the 

 forests and warring with the more cultivated denizens 

 of plains below, which are now deep under the waters. 

 Their weapons, lost in the cave, or buried in the flesh 

 of wounded animals which crept to the streams to 

 assuage their thirst, are those found in the cave 

 earth. The absence of human bones may merely show 

 that the mighty hunters of those days were too hardy, 

 athletic, and intelligent, often to perish from accidental 

 causes, and that they did not use this cavern for a 

 place of burial. But the land again subsided. The 

 valley of that now nameless river, of which the Rhine, 

 the Thames, and the Severn may have alike been tribu- 



