October 20, I8S3.] 



SCIENCE. 



)R9 



liave forty-niiic species left, of which thirly are slill 

 living and nineteen are extinel"' (p. i:t>). 'J'liouj;!! 

 llie nuinlior of the species has tlins been almost 

 doubleil, and Uie preseace of llie cave-bear remains 

 luuloubted, it continues to be the fact that no trace 

 of the hyena lias been found in the forest-bed. and no 

 suspicion exists as to his probable presence amongst 

 the eliminated uncertain species. 



It sliould be adiled, that no relic or indication of 

 liyena was met with in the 'fourih bed ' of lirixhaiu 

 AVindmill-hill Cavern, believed to be the equivalent 

 of the Kent's Hole breccia. 



I am not unmindfui of the fact lliat my evidence is 

 negative only, and tli.it raising a structure on it may 

 be building on a sandy foundation. Nevertheless, 

 it appears to me, as it did ten years ago, strong enough 

 to bear the following inferences: — 



1. That the hyena did not reach Britain until lis 

 last continental period. 



2. That the men who made the paleolithic nodiile- 

 tools found in the oldest known deposit in Kent's 

 Cavern arrived during the previous great submer- 

 gence, or, what is more probable, — indeed, what alone 

 seems possible, unless they were navigators, — during 

 the first continental jieriod. In short, I have little or 

 no doubt that the earliest Devonians we have sighted 

 were either of glacial, or, more probably, of pre-gla- 

 cial age. 



It cannot be necessary to add, that while the dis- 

 covery of remains of liyena in the forest-bed of 

 Cromer, or any other contemporary deposit, would 

 be utterly fatal to my argument, it would leave in- 

 tact all other evidence in support of tlie doctrine of 

 Uritish glacial or pre-glacial man. 



Some of my friends accepted the foregoing infer- 

 ences in 1873; while others, whose judgment 1 value, 

 declined them. Since that date no adverse fact or 

 thought has presented itself to me; but through the 

 researches and discoveries of others in comparatively 

 distant p;irts of our island, and especially in Kast 

 Anglia, the belief in British prc-glacial man appears 

 to have risen above the stage of riilicule, and to have 

 a decided prospect of general scientific acceptance at 

 no distant time. 



I must, before closing, devote a few words to a 

 class of workers who are ' more plague than profit.' 



The exuberant enthusiasm of some would-be pio- 

 neers in the question of luiman anlii|uity results 

 occasionally in supposed 'discoveries,' having an 

 amusing side; and not unfrequently some of the pio- 

 neers, though utter strangers, are so good as to send 

 me descriptions of their ' finds,' and of theiV views 

 respecting them. The following case may be taken 

 as a s.imple: in ISSl a gentleman of whom I had 

 never heard wrote, slating that he was one of those 

 who felt deeply interested in the antiqiiily of man, 

 and that he had read all the books he could command 

 on the subject. He was aware that it h.id been said 

 by one paleontologist to be " unreasonable to suppose 

 that man had lived during the eocene and miocene 

 periods," but he had an indistinct recollection that 

 another eminent man h,id somewhere 8ai<l that " man 

 liad probably existed in Kiigland during a tropical 



carlmniferons flora and fauna." lie then went on to 

 say, " 1 have got that which I cannot but look upon as 

 a fossil hiimaii skull. I have endeavored to examine 

 it from every conceivable stand-point, and it seems to 

 stand the test. The angles seem perfect ; the contour, 

 the same, but smaller in size tlian the average human 

 head: but that, in my opinion, is only what should 

 be expected, if we assume that man lived during the 

 carboniferous period, in spite of what Herodotus says 

 about the body of Orestes." Finally he reiiuested to 

 be allowed to send me the specimen. On its arrival, 

 it proved, of course, to be merely a stone; and noth- 

 ing but a strong ' unscientific use of the imagination ' 

 could lend any one to believe that it had ever been a 

 skull, human or iiifrahuman. 



It may be added, that a few years ago a gentleman 

 brought me what he called, and believed to be, ' three 

 human skulls, and as many elephants' teeth,' found 

 from time to time during liis researches in a lime- 

 stone-quarry. They proved to be nothing more than 

 six oddly-shaped lumps of Devonian limestone. 



So far as Britain is concerned, cave-hunting is a 

 science of Devonshire birth. The limestone-caverns 

 of Oreston, near Plymouth, were examined with some 

 care, in the interests of paleontology, as early as 1816, 

 and subse(iuently as they were successively discov- 

 ered. The two most famous caverns of the same 

 county — one on the northern, the olheron the south- 

 ern, shore of Torbay — have been anthropological as 

 well as paleontologieal studies, and, as we have seen, 

 have li.ad the lion's share in enlarging our estimate of 

 liunian antiquity. The researches liave, no doubt, 

 absorbed a great amount of time and labor, and 

 demanded the exercise of much care and patience; 

 hut they liave been replete with interest of a high 

 order, which would be greatly eiiliauced if I could 

 feel sure that your lime has not been wasted, nor ymir 

 patience exhausted, in listening to this address re- 

 specting lliem. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



Tree-growth. 



The ' influence of winds upon tree-growth,' causing 

 the asymntelry to which Mr. Kennedy calls attention 

 ill SciKNCE for Oct. .5, is noticeable to a remarkable 

 degree among conifers in the mountains of the west- 

 ern half of the United States. The stunted, ground- 

 hugging evergreens, which advance a little way above 

 the liinit of ordinary timber-growth on lofty nioun- 

 t.ains, are pres.sed to the earth by the steady gales as 

 much as by overbearing snows, if not more. Evi- 

 dence of this is found in the fact, that, where a cleft 

 or little hollow occurs at or in .advance of timber-line, 

 the trees will stand straiaht and sh.apely within it as 

 high as its rim (although in such nooks ihe snows lie 

 loiigest and most deeply), above which they will be 

 deformed, or unable to' grow at .all. This bending 

 of the trees, the whole skirt of a forest, away from 

 the edge of a precipice, or on a hilltop over which 

 the wind sucks through the funnel of a caflon, is so 

 common as to be seen every day by one travelling 

 through the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada. It is 

 liariiciilarly true in the .Sierra San .lo.an, where the 

 radiation of the vast adjacent sage-plains produces an 



