﻿422 Reports and Proceedings — British Association — 



There seems to be neither record nor tradition of the discovery of the 

 Cavern. Eichardson, in the 8th edition of ' A Tour through the Island 

 of Great Britain,' published in 1778, speaks of it as " perhaps the greatest 

 natural curiosity" in the county ; its name occurs on a map dated 1769 ; 

 it is mentioned in a lease dated 1659 ; visitors cut their names and dates 

 on the stalagmite from 1571 down to the present century ; judging from 

 numerous objects found on the floor, it was visited by man through 

 mediteval back to pre-Roman times ; and, unless the facts exhumed by 

 explorers have been misinterpreted, it was a human home during the era 

 of the Mammoth and his contemporaries. 



In 1824, Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, was led to make a few- 

 diggings in the Cavern, and was the first to find fossil bones there. He 

 was soon followed by Mr, (now Sir) W. C. Trevelyan, who not only found 

 bones, but had a plate of them engraved. In 1825, the Rev. J. MacEuery, 

 an Irish Roman Catholic priest residing in the family of Mr. Cary, of Tor 

 Abbey, Torquay, first visited the Cavern, when he, too, found teeth and 

 bones, of which he published a plate. Soon after, he made another visit, 

 accompanied by Dr. Buckland, when he had the good fortune to discover 

 a flint implement ; the first instance, he tells us, of such a relic being 

 noticed in any cavern (see Trans. Devon Assoc, iii. p. 441). Before the close 

 of 1825, he commenced a series of more or less systematic diggings, and 

 continued them until, and perhaps after, the summer of 1829 (ibid. p. 

 295). Preparations appear to have been made to publish the results of 

 his labours ; a prospectus was issued, numerous plates were lithographed, 

 it was generally believed that the MS. was almost ready, and the only 

 thing needed was a list of subscribers sufiicient to justify publication, when, 

 alas ! on the 18th Febxuary, 1841, before the printer had -received any 

 " copy," before even tlie world of Science had accepted his anthropological 

 discoveries, before the value of his labours were known to more than a very 

 few, Mr. MacEnery died at Torquay. 



After his decease his MS. could not be discovered, and its loss was duly 

 deplored. Nevertheless, it was found after several years, and, having 

 undergone varieties of fortune, became the property of Mr. Vivian, of 

 Torquay, who, having published portions of it in 1859, presented it in 

 1S67 to the Torquay Naturail History Society, whose property it still 

 remains. In 1869, I had the pleasure of printing the whole, in the 'Trans- 

 actions of the Devonshire Association.' 



Whilst Mr. MacEnery was conducting his researches, a few independent 

 diggings, on a less extensive scale, were undertaken by other gentlemen. 

 The principal of these was Mr. Godwin- Austen, the well-known geologist, 

 whose papers fully bore out all that MacEnery had stated (see Trans. 

 Geol. Soc. Lond. 2nd series, vi. p. 446). In 1846, a sub-committee of the 

 Torquay Natural History Society undertook the careful exploration of 

 very small parts of the Cavern, and their Report was entirely confirmatory 

 of the statements of their predecessors — that ixndoubted flint implements 

 did occur, mixed with the remains of extinct mammals, in the cave-earth, 

 beneath a thick floor of stalagmite. The sceptical position of the 

 authorities in geological science remained unaffected, however, uiitil 1858, 

 when the discovery and systematic exploration of a comparatively small 

 virgin cavern on Windmill Hill, at Brixham, led to a sudden and complete 

 revolution ; for it was seen that whatever were the facts elsewhere, there 

 had undoubtedly been found at Brixham flint implements commingled 

 with the remains of the Mammoth and his companions, and in such a way 

 as to render it impossible to doubt that Man occupied Devonshire before 

 the extinction of the cave mammals. 



Under the feeling that the statements made by MacEnery and his 

 followers respecting Kent's Hole were perhaps, after all, to be accepted as 



