ON THE EXPLOttATlON 01' THE SETTLE CAVES. 173 



In the lower bed, again, cvklcuce of man's presence is but scanty. At the 

 mouth, and close to where the human fibula was found, we have this year 

 met with a piece of rib (jf .-) apparently nicked by human agency. It is 

 about 2| inches of the dorsal end, but the articulating surfaces are broken 

 off. There are nine transverse nicks not reaching quite across, some not 

 halfway, and also a longitudinal nick. They appear to have been made by 

 some clumsy instrument drawn backwards and forwards. In character they 

 are totally unlike the square troughed hollows made by the gnawing of 

 rodents ; and they are equally unlike the furrows heavily ploughed by the 

 teeth of Carnivores. This specimen was at a depth of 25 feet from the roof 

 of the cave, which at this point was filled to the ceiling. We cannot at 

 present say of what animal it is a rib. Some light may perhaps be thrown 

 on it by a careful comparison. This is immaterial compared to the main 

 fact, which is, that there is much difficulty in supposing it to have been 

 nicked by any agency other than human. 



Conclmion. — And now, having restricted ourselves almost entirely to the 

 hard road of fact, in conclusion we may perhaps be permitted to indulge in a short 

 flight of fancy. Let us endeavour to realize how great is the distance in time 

 ■\vliich separates the savage of Craven from our own day. We have the 

 history of much of it in the Victoria Cave itself, and we may restore some of 

 the missing pages from the surrounding district. At the Cave, Eoman times 

 are separated from our own by sometimes less than one, but not by more 

 than two feet of talus, the chips which time detaches from the cliffs above. 

 The Neolithic age, which antiquaries know was a considerable time before 

 the Homan occupation, is represented by a layer in some places 4 or 5 feet 

 beneath the Roman, in others running into it. Then comes a thickness of 

 19 feel of talus without a record of any living thing. Judging by the shal- 

 lowness of the Roman layer, this must represent an enormous interval of 

 time. And this takes ns down to the boulders, the inscribed records of the 

 Glacial Period. They must represent a long scries of climatal changes, 

 during which the ice was waxing and waning, advancing and melting back 

 over the mouth of the Victoria Cave. This period saw the Reindeer and the 

 Grisly Bear occasionally in possession. Then we have an unconformity, a break 

 in the continuity of tlie deposits, the boulders lying on the edges of the older 

 beds — Time again ! And that time was long enough for changes to take 

 place which allowed the district to cool down from a warmth suitable to tlie 

 Hippopotamus and become a fitting pasture-ground for the Reindeer. It 

 was in that warm period that the Craven savage lived and died. 



But these are not all the changes which occurred in the north of England 

 since that time. The age of the great submergence represented by the sea- 

 beaches of Mod Tryfaen and Macclesfield, and by the Middle- Sands-and- 

 Gravels of Lancashire, has left no record up at the cave. Your Reporter is of 

 opinion that the submergence did not attain in that district a greater depth 

 than six or seven hundred feet ; and this would still leave the cave 700 feet 

 above the sea, though it would cut up the land into a group of islands. The 

 fact is sufficient for us, the depth is immaterial. Upon no fact arc geologists 

 better agreed than i;pon the existence of a ■widespread submergence and 

 emergence of land towards the close of the Glacial Period. No tradition is 

 common to more races or religions than that of a great deluge. Where back 

 in the past is the common point whence those two far-travelled, almost paral- 

 lel rays of truth had their origin ? In the opinion of your Reporter the 

 Craven savage, ■who lived before the Great Ice-sheet and before the Great Sub- 

 mergence, may form another of the many strong ties which bind together the 

 sciences of Geology and Anthropology. 



