ON THE EXPLORATION OF KENT'S CAVERN, DEVONSHIRE. 129 



Several of the osseous remains are good specimens, but none of them 

 require detailed description. 



The flint implement (No. 7167) was found, without any object of 

 interest near it, on May 16, 1878, in the fourth or lowest foot-level. It 

 is about 31 inches long, 2 - 5 inches in greatest breadth, and 2'2 inches in 

 greatest thickness. It is rounded, but by no means smooth, at one end, 

 where the original surface of the nodule remains ; and is abruptly truncated 

 at the other, where its edge is smooth, almost a plane, and measures 1'6 

 inch by "5 inch. The prevalent colour is slightly pink, as is usual with 

 the Breccia implements ; but the truncated edge, already mentioned, is 

 almost white, and suggested that it was, perhaps, fractured by the 

 workman who extracted it. This, however, he asserts was not the case ; 

 and, from the frankness which has always characterised him, the assertion 

 is no doubt correct. The implement is very convex and irregular on each 

 face, whence several flakes have been dislodged. It possesses the rude, 

 massive, unsymmetrical characters which mark the Breccia series of tools. 



The flake (No. 7189) is not of much importance. In form it is not 

 unlike an elm leaf; and, though no doubt artificially dislodged from a 

 nodule, it was probably never intended to be used as a tool. It is 2'25 

 inches long, 1*5 inch in greatest breadth, and - 4 inch in greatest thickness. 

 Its entire edge is thin, and it seems neither to have been used by man 

 nor to have undergone any natural abrasion. It was found in the third 

 .foot-level, without any object of interest very near it, on June 11, 1878. 



The flake, or, perhaps, fragment of a tool (No. 7203), is 1*5 inch long, 

 1*2 inch in greatest breadth, and - 6 inch in greatest thickness. It is 

 rudely triangular in form, obliquely truncated at the base where it is 

 broadest, convex on one face, and somewhat flat, but by no means plane 

 on the other. Several distinct facets occur on each face, and especially 

 on the convex one ; and its general appearance suggests that it is probably 

 a fragment of a larger tool. It was found alone in the third foot-level on 

 July 27, 1878 ; but at 2 feet higher level a portion of jaw of bear, con- 

 taining one tooth, with a few fragments of bone, were found vertically 

 above it the day before. 



The quartzite pebble, a rolled fragment of a larger one, is an oblique 

 semi-ellipsoid, measuring 33 X 2'2 x 2'2 inches, and, though of a form 

 and size suitable for a " hammer- stone," bears no marks of having been 

 utilised in any way. It was found alone in the fourth foot-level on July 

 29, 1878. 



It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that, whilst the Breccia in the High 

 Chamber has yielded fifty "finds," the "tools," which form three of them, 

 have never been found with any relic of an animal, and have, on the 

 whole, occupied a decidedly lower zone. Thus of the 46 osseous "finds " 

 31 occurred in the first or uppermost foot-level, 11 in the second, 3 in 

 the third, and 1 in the fourth or lowest, whilst the 3 flints have been 

 found only in the third and fourth foot-levels. 



It is difficult to understand how the tools found their way to a branch 

 of the Cavern so remote from the known entrances, and occupying so high 

 a level. The problem is apparently insoluble except on the hypothesis 

 that the workmen are approaching an entrance hitherto unknown ; and 

 as this supposition has been forced on the minds of the Superintendents 

 by other and independent facts, they believe it to be most desirable to 

 settle this question if possible, as they do not doubt that it would give a 

 definiteness to the explication of some of the Cavern phenomena, 

 1878. k 



