TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D.—DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. 555: 
which he says was an old Roman lead mine, but his remarks are intended to apply 
to Bone-Caves in general. He takes a very early opportunity in the second article 
of stating that ‘ We shall have to take care to distinguish between what is truly 
indicated in the “ Science” view, from what are purely imaginary exaggerations of 
its natural and historical phenomena’; and he no doubt believes that he has taken 
this care. 
‘We have now,’ he says, ‘to present our own view of the Victoria Cave and 
the phenomena connected with it, premising that a great many of the old mines in 
Europe were opened by Pheenician colonists and metal-workers, a thousand years 
before the Romans had set foot in Britain, which accounts for the various floors. 
of stalagmite found in most cayes, and also for the variety of groups of bones em— 
bedded in them. The animals represented by them when living were not running 
wild about the hills devouring each other, as science-men suppose, but the useful 
auxiliaries and trained drudges of the miners in their work. Some of them, as the 
bear, had simply been hunted and used for food, and others of a fierce character, as 
the hyzena, to frighten and to keep in awe the native Britons. The larger species 
of mammalia, as the elephant, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, and beasts foreign. 
to the country, the Romans no less than the Phoenicians, had every facility in. 
bringing with them in their ships of commerce from Carthage, or other of the 
African ports. These, with the native horse, ox, and stag, which are always 
found in larger numbers in the caves than the remains of foreign animals, all 
worked peacefully together in the various operations of the mines. . .. The 
hippopotamus, although amphibious, is a grand beast for heavy work, such as 
mining, quarrying, or road-malking, and his keeper would take care that he was. 
comfortably lodged in a tank of water during the night. . . . The phenomena of 
the Victoria Cave Lead Mine differs in no material respect from that of hundreds 
of others, whether of lead, copper, silver, or iron, worked in Roman and pre- 
Roman times in all parts of Europe. Its tunnels have all been regularly quarried 
and mined, not by ancient seas, but by the hands of historic man. Double openings 
have been made in every case for convenient ingress and egress, during the process 
of excavation. Its roadways had been levelled, and holes made up with breccia, 
gravel, sand, and bones of beasts that had succumbed: to toil, on which sledges, 
trolleys, and waggons could glide orrun. .. . Near the entrance inside Victoria 
Cave were found the usual beds of charcoal and the hearths for refining the metal, 
while close by on the hill-side may still be seen the old kilns in which the men 
“yoasted ” the metallic ores and burned lime.’ 
Should anyone be disposed to ascribe these articles to some master of the art: 
of joking, it need only be replied that they appeared in a religious journal (The 
Champion of the Fath against Current Infidelity, for April 20, and May 11, 1882, 
vol. i. pp. 5 and 26), with the writer’s name appended ; and that I have reason to: 
believe they were written seriously and in earnest. 
Tt has been already intimated that Brixham Cavern has secured a somewhat 
prominent place in literature; and it can scarcely be needful to add that some 
of the printed statements respecting it are not quite correct. The following 
instances of inaccuracy may be taken as samples. 
The late Professor Ansted, describing Brixham Cavern, in 1861, said: “In the- 
middle of the cavern, under stalagmite itself, and actually entangled with an 
antler of a reindeer and the bones of the great cavern bear, were found rude 
sculptured flints, such as are known to have been used by savages in most parts- 
of the world.’ (Geological Gossip, p. 209.) 
To be ‘entangled’ with one another, the antler, the bones of the Cave-bear,. 
and the flints must have been all lying together. Asa matter of fact, however, 
the antler was on the upper surface of the sheet of stalagmite, while all the relics 
of the Caye-bear, and all the flints were in detrital beds below that sheet. Again, 
the flints nearest the bear’s bones in question were two in number; they were- 
twelve feet south of the bones, and fifteen inches less deep in the bed. There was. 
no approach to entanglement. 
Should it be suggested that it is scarcely necessary to correct errors om 
