550 REPORT—1883. 
prospective, which may he said to radiate from that exploration ; confining myself 
mainly to South Devon. 
Probably nothing will better show the apparent apathy and scepticism with 
which, up to 1858, all geological evidence of the Antiquity of Man was received 
by British geologists generally, than the following statement of facts :— 
About the beginning of the second quarter of the present century the late Rey. 
J. MacEnery made Kent’s Cavern, or Kent’s Hole, near Torquay, famous by his 
researches and discoveries there. He not only found flint implements beneath a 
thick continuous sheet of stalagmite, but, after a most careful painstaking investi- 
gation in the presence of witnesses, arrived at the conclusion that the flints ‘ were 
deposited in their deep position before the creation of the stalagmite’ (Trans. 
Devon. Assoc. uli. 330); and when it was suggested by the Rey. Dr. Buckland, to 
whom he at once and without reservation communicated all his discoveries, that 
‘the ancient Britons had scooped out ovens in the stalagmite, and that through 
them the knives got admission to the “ diluvium,”’ he replied, ‘I am bold to say 
that in no instance have I discovered evidence of breaches or ovens in the floor, but 
one continuous plate of stalagmite diffused uniformly over the loam’ (Zdrd. p. 334). 
He added, ‘ It is painful to dissent from so high an authority, and more particu- 
larly so from my concurrence generally in his views of the phenomena of these 
cayes, which three years’ personal observation has in most every instance enabled 
me to verify’ (Jbid. p. 338). 
It is, perhaps, not surprising that Dr. Buckland, one of the leading geologists of 
his day, should be too tenacious of his opinion, and feel too secure in his position 
to yield to the statements and arguments of his comparatively young friend 
MacEnery, then scarcely known to the scientific world. 
That the position taken by Buckland retarded the progress of truth, and was 
calculated to check the ardour of research, is apparently certain, and much 
to be regretted; but it should be remembered that, at least, as early as 1819 he 
taught that ‘the two great points ... of the low antiquity of the human race, 
and the universality of a recent deluge, are most satisfactorily confirmed by every- 
thing that has yet been brought to light by Geological investigations ’ ( Vindicie 
Geologice, p. 24); that early in 1822 he reiterated and emphasized these opinions 
in his famous Kirkdale paper (Phil. Trans. for 1822, pp. 171-236), which the: 
Royal Society “ crowned with the Copley medal” (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xiii. 
p. xxxili); that in 1828, having amplified and revised this paper, he published 
it as an independent quarto volume under the attractive title of Reliquie Diluviane, 
of which he issued a second edition in 1824; and that though his acquaintance with 
Kent’s Cayern was much less intimate than that of MacEnery, he, nevertheless, was, 
of the two, the earlier worker there, and in fact had discovered a flint implement 
in it before MacEnery had ever seen that or any other cayern—the first tool of the 
kind found in any cavern, it is believed, which in all probability was met with 
under circumstances not in conflict with his published opinion on the low antiquity 
of man. I confess that under such circumstances, human nature being what it is, 
the line followed by Dr. Buckland seems to me to have been that which most men 
would have pursued. 
It was, at any rate, the line to which he adhered as late, at least,as 1837 ; for in 
his well-known Bridgewater Treutise, published that year, after describing his visit 
to the caverns near Liége, famous through the discoveries of Dr. Schmerling, he 
said: ‘The human bones found in these caverns are in a state of less decay than 
those of the extinct species of beasts; they are accompanied by rude flint knives 
and other instruments of flint and bone, and are probably derived from uncivilised 
tribes that inhabited the caves. Some of the human bones may also be the remains 
of individuals who, in more recent times, have been buried in such convenient re- 
positories. M. Schmerling . . . expresses his opinion that these human bones are 
coeval with those of the quadrupeds, of extinct species, found with them; an 
opinion from which the Author, after a careful examination of M. Schmerling’s 
collection, entirely dissents’ (op. cit. i. 602). 
It may be doubted, however, whether his faith in these, his early, convictions. 
