32 REPORT— ISGr. 



been carried on, has been marked by some prominent facts. Thus, ovate flint 

 implements have been found in the Great Chamber only, and there too the 

 ffecal matter was almost exclusively met with. Bone tools and the Black 

 Band presented themselves in the Vestibule, but not elsewhere ; and the same 

 branch of the Cavern was marked by the great numbers of chips and flakes 

 of flint, and of blocks of old Stalagmitic Floor. Indeed the latter were so 

 numerous and so piled on one another, esx^ecially on the western verge of the 

 area occupied by the Black Baud, as to assume the aspect of a rudely formed 

 wall. In the Lecture Hall, extremely few specimens of flint occurred ; but 

 many of the blocks of old Stalagmite contained bones and teeth, the great 

 majoi'ity of the latter bemg those of the Cave-bear. The blocks themselves 

 were just as numerous in the other branches, but not one of the77i was found 

 to be ossiferous. 



Were we to speculate respecting the probable interpretation of the Black 

 Band found beneath the Floor of the Vestibule — bearing in mind its very 

 limited area, its position near the northern entrance of the Cavern and within 

 the influence of the light entering thereby, its numerous bits of charcoal and 

 of burnt bones, its bone tools audits very abundant, keen-edged, unworn, and 

 brittle chips and flakes of whitened flint, — we might be tempted to conclude 

 that we had not only identified Kent's Cavern as the home of one of our earlj' 

 ancestors, but the Vestibule as the particular apartment in which he enjoyed 

 the pleasures of his own fireside ; where he cooked and ate his meals ; and 

 where he chipped flint nodules, and cut and scraped bones into implements 

 for war, for the chase, and for domestic use. 



It is not improbable that some feeling of disappointment may rest in a few 

 minds, and possibly something akin to rejoicing may find a place in others, at 

 the fact that the labour which has been expended on this Cavern from the 

 time of M'Enery to the present moment, has failed to detect beneath the 

 Floor of Stalagmite any portion of the human skeleton. The results of these 

 labours, however, do not justify either of those feelings, nor do they increase 

 our confidence in negative evidence. Mr. M'Enery, at the end of the re- 

 searches which, from 1825 to 1829, he carried on, was able to report the dis- 

 covery of flint implements as the onlj' indications of human existence. To 

 the same eff'ect were the subsequent investigations of Mr. Godwin-Austen ; 

 and, in like manner, the Torquay Natm-al History Society, at the close of their 

 search in 1846, were unable to report further than that they had found man's 

 flint tools mixed up, in the lied Cave-earth, with the remains of extinct ani- 

 mals in such a way as to render it impossible to doubt their contemporaneity. 

 In 1865, the Committee appointed by the British Association commenced the 

 exploration entrusted to them ; and for some months they too were unable to 

 report more than the discovery of flint implements. 



In 1858, moreover, the celebrated cavern at Brixham, on the opposite side 

 of Torbay, was discovered and methodically explored. The trustworthiness 

 of the facts disclosed there may be said to have at once revolutionized the 

 opinion of the scientific world on the question of human antiquity. The facts 

 themselves, however, were identical mth those which Kent's Cavern had 

 yielded, at intervals, for upwards of thirty years, — flint tools inosculating with 

 the remains of extinct mammals, in the Cave-earth, below a continuous floor 

 of stalagmite. If ever merely negative evidence, then, could establish a pro- 

 position, it seemed safe to conclude that the only traces of man contained by 

 the ossiferous caves of Devonshire were the so-called flint implements, about 

 whose human origin some persons were still sceptical. 



The Kent's Cavern Committee, however, were enabled in their First Re- 



