Feb. 1 8, 1875] 



NATURE 



303 



cases is that a warm moist wind blows against a rock 

 of lower temperature, and the vapour is condensed all 

 over the surface. Minute vegetation at first, con- 

 spicuous mosses and lichens afterwards help the work, 

 and the softer portions of the cliff melt away — here on 

 a small scale, so as to leave marks somewhat like 

 pholas borings ; there on a large scale, leaving an 

 overhanging sheltering ledge, such as may be seen in 

 the sketch (Fig. 71, p. 249). Acidulated water, passing 

 through cracks and fissures in the limestone rock, eats 

 away the sides and enlarges its channel ; but when it gets 

 to the open air and is aerated in waterfalls or draughts, it 

 gives off as gas the acid which helped it to hold the carbo- 

 nate of lime in solution, and down this goes as stalagmite, 

 or in some other form. Here we have a measure of time, 

 as we can observe the present rate of accumulation, but 

 we cannot get at any satisfactory results because the 

 agents producing change are so many, so various, and so 

 irregular in their action. It is not only, as Prof. Dawkins 

 points out in the case of the Jockey Cap in Ingleborough 

 Cave, that "it maybe the result not of the continuous 

 but of the intermittent drop of the water containing car- 

 bonate of lime" (p. 40), but the water continually stops 

 up with stalagtitic accumulations the hole or crack 

 through which it came; and so in many parts of that very 

 cave we see a dry roof cross-barred with ridges repre- 

 senting joints, which once let water trickle through, but 

 which are now sealed up with travertine. 



Prof Dawkins points out other sources of error in 

 calculations based on the rate of accumulation of 

 stalagmite. 



But we have the order of succession of deposits con- 

 taining various relics, and, where there is no reason for 

 suspecting subsequent disturbance, the order is always 

 the same. We have the identification of the style ol 

 instruments used by man, the groups of animals that 

 lived at the different periods, with those of other deposits, 

 the antiquity of which is measured by geographical 

 changes. So, putting all the evidence together, we get a 

 connected story. 



Prof Dawkins begins with the newer, and gives an 

 account of how the civilised Celtic people were, after the 

 Romans left, driven away to the west by the heathen 

 Saxon — y Saeson digred, as they were called by the 

 Welsh — and how they often had to betake themselves to 

 the caves and holes of the rocks for shelter from their 

 foes. Their remains have been found in the Victoria 

 Cave at Settle, and the Kirkhead Cave on Morecambe 

 Bay. Both of these are on the borders of the Cumbrian 

 Mountains, to which the Celtic people were being pushed 

 from the rich lowlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire, as, 

 further south, they were driven into the mountains of 

 Wales. Prof Dawkins gives an interesting sketch of the 

 history of this period ; and, in commenting on the v.alue 

 of certain animals for purposes of classification, tells us 

 when many of our pets and other animals were first intro- 

 duced, and when many animals once wild in our country 

 were exterminated. Though there is evidence that the dog 

 had for ages been the companion of man, the cat seems to 

 have been unknown before about the year 800 a.d. The 

 common fowl and fallow deer seem to have been intro- 

 duced by the Romans. The reindeer and beaver were wild 

 in Britainafter the Norman^Conquest ; the wild boar till 



the time of James I., and the wolf till long after the Civil 

 War. These cave-folk were not prominent in history, 

 but as their relics refer them to a time when events which 

 are chronicled in history were happening in our country, 

 Prof Dawkins has described them under the head " His- 

 toric Period." 



But the caves have yielded also the records of long 

 ages before that ; the iron, bronze, and polished stone 

 ages. Of this period there is no contemporaneous his- 

 tory in Western Europe ; but who knows how much of 

 Egyptian, Assyrian, or Chinese history may tell of events 

 synchronous with neolithic man in Europe ? This period 

 does not appear to have been cut off from historic times 

 by any great physical changes, and, as we shall see by 

 and by, the Britons of to-day seem to be in part descended 

 from the ancient race that dwelt here in prehistoric times. 

 They were a wide-spread pastoral people, sometimes 

 dwelling in villages of huts on land, sometimes in wooden 

 clay-patched houses standing on piles far out into a lake. 

 They had domestic animals, and cultivated fruits and 

 corn. As time went on, they acquired the use of bronze, 

 then iron, and as they lapped round the outskirts of 

 oriental civilisation, and its influence spread, some were 

 absorbed and some driven back to the mountains. Who, 

 then, were these people who lived just before our historic 

 times ? Is any part of the population of modern Europe 

 directly descended from them, or were they all extermi- 

 nated and their place taken by the invading wave of 

 population 1 Prof. Huxley has pointed out the twofold 

 type that may be found in some peoples that have for 

 centuries been looked upon as one race. Ctesar, he 

 reminds us, found two types of Celts in this country, the 

 fair and the swarthy. In England of to-diy we find, 

 speaking English and calling themselves Englishmen, 

 the same two types, the Xanthochroid and the Melano- 

 chroid. Huxley further points out that throughout the 

 south-west of Ireland, South Wales, west and south- 

 west of France, Spain, Italy, Greece, &c., the dark 

 characters prevail, while anyone travelling from North 

 Ireland across Scotland, Flanders, Germany, &c., would 

 see none but fair people all the way. He thinks 

 the dark complexions may have been inherited from 

 Iberian ancestors, whose more direct representatives 

 we have in the Basques. The fair-haired invaders did 

 not exterminate, but absorbed or united with a great con- 

 quered population of dark-skinned people ; and these two 

 races, each we must suppose of great " prepotency of 

 transmission,'' have handed down their distinctive cha- 

 racters for centuries ; sometimes one, sometimes the 

 other predominating. We must therefore bear in mind 

 that the people included under the term " neolithic " in no 

 way form one ethnological group. Neolithic is a useful 

 temporary term to represent a phase of culture which 

 different races reach and pass, and to which a diflerent 

 relative position in time must be assigned in diflerent 

 parts of the world. New forms, new metals, or new lan- 

 guages, may have come in with invading tribes and have 

 been adopted by the now mixed race ; but there is no 

 evidence of an entire sweeping away of the older fashions 

 at any period from neolithic times to our own. 



But long before those times also we have abundant 

 records of man's sojourn in Western Europe. Who and 

 of what race were these earlier or palasolithic folk ? Their 



