ON KENT’S CAVERN, DEVONSHIRE. 57 
South-west Chamber, and excavated the Cave-earth to the depth of 2 feet, 
when, having found nothing, they abandoned the work. Had they continued 
their labours but another half hour, had they dug but 2 inches lower, they 
would have entered the richly ossiferous Breccia, and, in all probability, 
caught sight of the earlier chapter of the history of the Cavern. 
It has been already mentioned that the Rock-like Breccia contains, amongst 
other things, considerable pieces of stalagmite. There can be no doubt that 
the same interpretation applies to these as applied to those found in the 
Cave-earth. If the latter were correctly regarded as evidence of a floor older 
than the deposit in which they were lodged, the former must be held to 
indicate the existence of a floor still older than the Breccia—a floor of the 
third order of antiquity, which, in harmony with the terminology hitherto 
used, may, for the present at least, be termed the “ Oldest Floor of Stalag- 
mite.” 
If the present state of the evidence be trustworthy, the Cavern, during 
the era of the Rock-like Breccia, was almost exclusively a mausoleum for 
Ursus speleus. Up to this time, no trace of Hyena spelea, Felis spelea, 
Hlephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus fossilis, or of several 
other well-known cavern species has been found in the old deposit. Though 
he was subsequently their contemporary in Devonshire, the Great Cave-Bear, 
so far as the present evidence goes, seems to have had his home there very 
long before them. 
The Committee have again to state that they have not yet had the good 
fortune to discover any remains of Hippopotamus major or Machairodus 
latidens, either in the Cave-earth or in the Breccia. 
Whilst it must be admitted that the labours of the past twelve months 
have not added anything to the kind, or very greatly to the amount, of evi- 
dence of the antiquity of Man in Devonshire, it must also be admitted that 
the continued and careful researches of three and a half years have utterly 
failed to detect a single fact having even a remote tendency to invalidate the 
conclusion to which the early Cavern researches had led. Up to this time, 
the various kinds of evidence are in the most complete accord; there is 
nothing conflicting. No comparatively modern object has been found below 
its place, and no ancient one has been met with in a modern niche. The 
Modern Floor of Stalagmite has kept the two apart and perfectly distinct. 
There is nothing incongruous in the belief that the ancient Cave-Men made 
and used unpolished flint implements, split the bones of animals, and cut and 
seraped the fragments into pins and fish-spears, employed fire in the prepa- 
ration of their food, and selected some stones for hammers or crushers, and 
others to rub down the asperities on their bone tools; and this belief ap- 
parently embraces all the Cavern Anthropology which up to this time has 
been discovered. 
The researches of 1867-68, however, have been by no means barren or 
unimportant. They have, as has been pointed out, established the existence 
of two Chapters in the Cavern history during the times of the extinct mam- 
mals, and haye given a glimpse of a third and still earlier one; they have 
solved one problem, and, in doing so, have suggested several others ; they 
have given an increased stimulus to research by prompting the following 
questions :— 
Ist. What were the conditions which at three different and widely sepa- 
rated times allowed detrital matter to be carried into the Cavern? 
2nd. How was the introduction of this material suspended during, at least, 
two protracted periods, in which thick floors of Stalagmite were formed ? 
1868. F 
