62 report— 1877. 



The only remains met ■with in the Fourth Bed were those of Bear, Horse, Ox, 

 and Mammoth. 



The Human Industrial Remains exhumed in the Cavern were flint implements 

 and a hammer-stone, and occurred in the Third and Fourth Beds only. The pieces 

 of fliut met with were 36 in nurnher. Of these, 15 are held to show evidence of 

 having been artificially worked, in 9 the workmanship is rude or doubtful, 4 have 

 been mislaid, and the remainder are believed not to have been worked at all (see 

 Phil. Trans, vol. 163, 1873, pp. 561, 562). Of the undoubted tools, 11 were found 

 in the Third and 4 in the Fourth Bed. Two of those yielded by the Third Bed, 

 found 40 feet apart, in two distinct but adjacent galleries, and one a month before 

 the other, proved to be parts of one and the same nodule-tool ; and I have little or no 

 doubt that it had been washed out of the Fourth Bed and redeposited in the Third. 



The Hammer-Stone was a quartzite pebble, found in the upper portion of the 

 Fourth Bed, and bore distinct marks of the use to which it was applied. 



Speaking of the discovery of the tools just mentioned, Mr. Prestwich said in 

 1859 : — " It was not until I had myself witnessed the conditions under which flint 

 implements had been found at Brixham, that I became fully impressed with the 

 validity of the doubts thrown upon the previously prevailing opinions with respect 

 to such remains in caves " (Phil. Trans. 1860, p. 280) ; and according to Sir 0. 

 Lyell, writing in 1803 : — " A sudden change of opinion was brought about in 

 England respecting the probable coexistence, at a former period, of man and many 

 extinct mammalia, in consequence of the results obtained from the careful explo- 

 ration of a Cave at Brixham The new views very generally adopted bj r English 



geologists had no small influence on the subsequent progress of opinion in France " 

 (Antiquity of Man, pp. 96, 97). 



Bench Cavern. — Early in 1861 information was brought me that an ossiferous 

 cave had just been discovered at Brixham, and, on visiting the spot, I found that, 

 of the limestone quarries worked from time to time in the northern slope of Furze- 

 ham Hill, one known as Bench Quarry, about half a mile due north of" Wiudmill- 

 Hill Cavern, and almost overhanging Torbay, had been abandoned in 1839, and 

 that work had been recently resumed in it. It appeared that in 1839 the workmen 

 had laid bare the greater part of a vertical dyke, composed of red clayey loam and 

 angular pieces of limestone, forming a coherent wall-like mass, 27 feet high, 12 feet 

 long, 2 feet in greatest thickness, and at its base 123 feet above sea-level. In the 

 face of it lay several fine relics of the ordinary Cave Mammals, including an entire 

 left lower jaw of Hyecna spelcea replete with teeth, but which had nevertheless 

 failed to arrest the attention of the incurious workmen who exposed it, or of any 

 one else. 



Soon after the resumption of the work in 1861, the remnant of the outer wall of 

 the fissure was removed, and caused the fall of an incoherent part of the dyke, which 

 it had previously supported. Amongst the debris the workmen collected some 

 hundreds of specimens of skulls, jaws, teeth, vertebrae, portions of antlers, and 

 bones, but no indications of Man. Mr. Wolston, the proprietor, sent some of the 

 choicest specimens to the British Museum, and submitted the remainder to Mr. 

 Ayshford Sanford, F.G.S., from whom I learn that the principal portion of them 

 are relics of the Cave Ilyrena, from the unborn whelp to very aged animals. With 

 them, however, were remains of Bear, Reindeer, Ox, Hare, Anicola ratticeps, A. 

 ar/restis, Wolf, Fox, and part of a single maxillary with teeth not distinguishable 

 from those of Cants isatis. To this list I may add Rhinoceros, of which Mr. Wolston 

 showed me at least one bone. 



From the foregoing undesirably, but unavoidably, brief descriptions, it will be 

 seen that the Devonshire Caverns, to which attention has been now directed, belong 

 to two classes, — those of Oreston, the Ash-Hole, and Bench being Fissure Cares ; 

 whilst those of Yealm Bridge, Windmill Hill at Brixham, Kent's Hole, and Ansty's 

 Cove are Tunnel Caves. 



Windmill-Hill and Kent's Hole Caverns have alone been satisfactorily explored ; 

 and besides them none have yielded evidence of the contemporaneity of Man with 

 the extinct Cave Mammals. 



