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ami we are utterly ignorant, and must for ever remain so, as to 

 whether they did or did not contain indications of human 

 existence. I visited the spot from time to time, and bought up 

 everything to be met with ; but other scientific work in another 

 part of the county occupied me too closely to allow more than 

 an occasional visit. The greater part of the specimens I secured 

 were lodged in the British Museum, where they seem to have 

 been forgotten, whilst a few remain in my private collection. 



Some difference of opinion has existed respecting the character 

 of the successive caverns, and much mystery has been imported 

 into the question of the introduction of their contents. IVIr. 

 Whidbey, it is said, "saw no possibility of the cavern of 1816 

 having had any external communication through the rock in 

 which it was inclosed" (Phil. Trans., 1S17, pp. 176—182) ; but 

 Dr. Buckland was of opinion that they were all at first fissures 

 open at the top, and " that the openings had been long filled up 

 with rubbish, mud, stalactite, or fragments of rock cemented, as 

 sometimes happens, into a breccia as solid as the original rock, 

 and overgrown with grass" (Phil. Trans., 1822, pp. 171 — 240). 

 The conclusion I arrived at, after studying so much of the 

 roof of the cavern of 1S5S as remained intact, was that Dr. 

 Buckland's opinion was lully borne out by the facts ; that, in 

 short, the Oreston Caverns were Fissure Caverns, not Tunnel 

 Caverns. 



The cavern of 1858 was an almost vertical fissure, extending 

 a length of about 90 feet from N.N.E. to S.S.W. It commenced 

 at about 8 feet below the surface of the plateau, continued thence 

 to the base of the cliff, but how much further was not known, 

 and its ascertained height was about 52 feet. It was 2 feet wide 

 at top, whence it gradually widened to 10 feet at bottom. The 

 roof, judging from that part which had not been destroyed, was 

 a mass of limestone-breccia, made up of lars;e angular fragments, 

 cemented with carbonate of lime, and requiring to be blasted as 

 much as oidinary limestone. The cavern was completely filled 

 with deposits of various kinds. 



The uppermost 8 feet consisted of loose angular pieces of lime- 

 stone, none of which exceeded 10 lb. in weight, mixed with a 

 comparatively small amount of such sand as is common in 

 dolom.tiscd limestone districts, but without a trace of stalagmite 

 or fo-sil of any kind. The 32 feet next below were occupied 

 with similar materials, with the addition of a considerable quantity 

 of tough, dark, unctuous clay. Between this mass and the outer 

 wall of the cavern was a nearly vertical plate of stalagmite, 

 usually about 2 feet thick, and containing, at by no means wide 

 intervals, firmly cemented masses of breccia identical in composi- 

 tion with the adjacent bed just mentioned. The bones the cavern 

 yielded were all found within these 32 feet ; and were met with 

 equally in the loose and the coherent breccia, as well as in the 

 stalagmite. A somewhat considerable number of ellipsoidal 

 balls of clay, from i'5 to 2*5 inches in greatest diimeter, 

 occurred in the clay of this bone-bed, but not elsewhere. Still 

 lower was a mass of dark, tough, unctuous clay, containing a 

 very few, small, angular stones, but otherwi-e perfectly homo- 

 geneous, and known to be 12 feet deep, but how much more was 

 undetermined. 



The osseous remains found at Oreston prior to 1858 have been 

 described by Sir E. Home, Mr. Clift, Dr. Buckland, Prof 

 Owen, .Mr. I5usk, and others. The animals represented were 

 Ursus friscus, U. spchuis, weasel (?), wolf, fox, cave hysena, 

 cave lion, Rhinoceros leptorhinus, Eipitis fossilis, E. plieidens, 

 Asinus fossilis. Bison minor. Bos longifrons, and, according to 

 the late Mr. Bellamy, mammoth and hippopotamus (see Nat. Hist, 

 of S. Devon, 1839, p. 82). With regard to hippotamus, I can only 

 say that I have never met with satisfactory evidence of its 

 occurrence in Devonshire ; but the mammoth was certainly 

 found at Oreston in 1858 ; and, unless I am greatly in error, 

 remains of Rhitioceros ttchorhinus were also met with there, and 

 lodged by me in the British Museum. It may be added that the 

 skull and other relics of a hog were exhumed on that occasion, 

 and now belong to my collection. There was nothing to suggest 

 that the cavern had been the home of the hysena ; and whilst I 

 fully accept Dr. Buckland's opinion that animals had fallen into 

 the open fissures and there perished, and that the remains had 

 subsequently been washed thence into the lower vaultings (" Reliq. 

 Dil.," 2nd. ed., 1834, p. 78), I venture to add that some of the 

 animals may have retired thither to die ; a few may have been 

 dragged or pursued there by beasts of prey ; whilst rains, such 

 as are not quite unknown in Devonshire in the present day, 

 probably washed in some of the Ijones of such as died near at 

 hand on the adjacent plateau. Notliing appears ^to have been 

 met with suggestive of human visits. 



Kent's Hole. — About a mile due east from Torquay harbour 

 and half a mile north from Torbay there is a small wooded 

 limestone hill, the eastern side of which is, for the uppermost 

 30 feet, a vertical cliff, having at its base, and 54 feet apart, two 

 aper ures leading into one and the same vast cavity in the interior 

 of the hill, and known as Kent's Hole or Cavern. The.se open- 

 ings are about 200 feet above mean sea-level, an I from them the 

 hill slopes rapidly to the valley at its foot, at a level of from 60 

 to 70 feet below. 



There seems to be neither record nor tradition of the discovery 

 of the cavern. Richardson, in the Sth edition of " A Tour 

 through the Island of Great Britain," published in 1778, speaks 

 of it as "perhaps the greatest natural curiosity " in the county ; 

 its name occurs on a map dated 1769 ; it is mentioned in a lease 

 1659 ; visitors cut their names and dates on the stalagmite from 

 1571 down to the present century; judging from numerous 

 objects found on the floor, it was visited by man through 

 mediaeval back to pre- Roman times ; and, unless the facts 

 exhumed by explorers have been misinterpreted, it was a human 

 home during the era of the mammoth and his contemporaries. 



Ill 1824 Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, was led to 

 make a few diggings in the cavern, and was the first to find 

 fossil bones there. He was soon followed by Mr. (now Sir) 

 \V. C. Trevelyan, who not only found bones, but had a plate of 

 them engraved. In 1825, the Rev. J. MacEnery, an Iri.sh 

 Roman Catholic priest residing in the family of Mr. Cary, of 

 Tor Abbey, Torquay, first visited the cavern, when he, too, 

 found teeth and bones, of which he published a plate. Soon 

 afier, he made another visit, accompanied by Dr. Buckland, 

 when he had the good fortune to discover a flint implement ; the 

 first instance, he telU us, of such a relic being noticed in any 

 cavern (see Trans. Devon Assoc, iii., p. 441). Befoie the close 

 of 1825, he commenced a seiics ot more or less systematic 

 diggings, and continued them until, and perhaps after, the 

 summer of 1829 (ibid., p. 295). Preparations appear to have 

 been made to publish the results of his labours ; a prospectus 

 Wis issued, numerous plates were lithographed, it was gener.illy 

 believed that the MS. was almost ready, and the only thing 

 needed was a list of subscribers sufficient to justify publication, 

 when, alas! on February 18, 1841, before the printer had le- 

 ceived any " copy," before even the world of science had 

 accepted his anthiopological discoveries, before the value of his 

 labours was known to more than a very few, Mr. MacEnery died 

 at Torquay. 



After his decease his MS. could not be discovered, and its loss 

 was duly deplored. Nevertheless, it was found afier several 

 years, and, having undergone varieties of fortune, became the 

 property of Mr. Vivian, of Torquay, who, having pu'>lished 

 portions of it In 1859, presented it in 1867 to the To'-quay 

 Natural History Society, wh 'Se property it still re nams. In 

 1S69 I had the pleasure of printing the whole, in the Transac- 

 tions of the Devonshire Association. 



\ViiU,t Mr. MacEnery was conducting his researches, a few 

 indept-ndent diggings, on a less extensive scale, were tikeii by 

 other gentlemen. The principal of these was Mr. Godwin- 

 Austen, tiie well-known geologist, whose papers fully bore out 

 all that MacEnery had stated. (See Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond., 

 2nd scries, vi., p. 446), In 1846 a suh. committee of the Torquay 

 Natural History Society undertook the careful exploration of 

 very small parts of the cavern, and their Report was entirely 

 confirmatory of the statements of their predecessors — that un- 

 doubted flint implements did occur, mixed with the remains of 

 extinct mammals, in the cave-earth, beneath a thick floor of 

 stalagmite. The sceptical posiion of the authorities in geo- 

 logical science remained unatlected, however, untl 185S, when 

 the discovery and systematic exploration of a comparatively 

 sm.all virgin cavern on Windmill HUl, at Brixham, led to a 

 sudden and complete revolution ; for it was seen that whatever 

 were the facts elsewhere, there had undoubtedly been found at 

 Bri.xham flint implements commingled with remains of the 

 mammoth and his companions, and in such a way as to render 

 it impossible to doubt that man occupied Devonshire before the 

 extinction of the cave mammals. 



Under the feeling that the statements made by MacEnery and 

 his followers respeciing Kent's Hole were perhaps, a ter all, 

 to be accepted as ve.ities, the British Association, in 1S64, 

 appointed a committee to make a complete, systemitic, and 

 accurate exploration of the cavern, in which it was known that 

 very extensive portions remained entirely intact. This committee 

 commenced its labours on March 28, 1865 ; it has been re- 

 appointed, year after year, with sufficient grants of money, up to 



