78 PROFESSOR T. MCKENNY HUGHES, M.A. 
modified by man. In quite recent times, the soft New 
Red Sandstone has been scooped out into cells and summer- 
~ houses. ‘The chalk has been excavated from very early times 
in the search for flint, and traces of sojourn in such pits are 
not wanting. We need not stop seriously to discuss the 
suggestion that Fingal’s Cave was excavated by man. The 
rock-hewn tombs around Jerusalem, the catacombs of Italy 
and Hgypt are artificial caves. 
All along the Vezére and other cliff-margined valleys in the 
South of France we see the natural caves and rock-shelters, 
modified sometimes by man, walled up and occupied as store- 
houses, or even as dwellings. History tells us that those 
caves were frequently held by troops during the long occu- 
pation of that part of France by the English. The Rock of 
Tayac, like Gibraltar, “‘a kind of fortress entirely hollowed out 
of the rock,” is frequently mentioned in the history of the wars 
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.* And the Aquitani, 
when pressed by Czesar’s troops, retreated to their caves in 
South-central France. I have heard of a man who lived for 
some time in a caye in Yorkshire, coming out at night for 
food,—milk from the neighbours’ cows, eggs, or whatever else 
he could lay hands on. There were many odds and ends 
in that cave which might have been relics of his sojourn, as 
well as others of more remote antiquity. 
There are hardly any records of research in caves which are 
known to have been occupied in recent or historic times. A 
systematic examination of all the caves in which history tells 
us the inhabitants of any district once took refuge, and an 
exact description of all found and observed in them, would be 
very interesting, and might furnish important evidence 
bearing upon doubtful questions. 
Artificial caves, however, or artificially modified caves, form 
a very small proportion of those with which we have chiefly to 
do. The caves in which primeval man lived, and into which. 
in old times hyenas dragged carcasses of the animals they 
killed or found dead alone the river-courses, were all natural 
caves. So are the celebrated stalactite caves of Germany and 
America. But we must inquire into the mode of formation 
of natural caves if we would understand the conditions which 
surrounded primeval man or speculate on his age. 
There are sea-caves formed by the waves that lash the 
cliffs as if sounding them to find their weaker places. The water 
* Reliquie Aquitanice, p. 4. 
+ Exploration of Cave Ha, Journ. Anthropological Inst. 1874, 
