﻿Section C. — Address hy Mr. W. Pengelly, President. 429 



whilst they differ in the two cases, agree in being such as may have been 

 furnished by the districts adjacent to the Cavern-hills respectively, but 

 not by the hills themselves, and must have been deposited prior to the 

 existing local geographical conditions. In each, this bed contained flint 

 implements and relics of Bear, but in neither of them those of Hyaena. 

 In short, the Fourth Bed of Windmill Hill Cavern, Brixham, and the 

 Breccia of Kent's Hole, Torquay, are coeval, and belong to what I have 

 called the Ursine period of the latter. 



2nd. The beds just mentioned were in each Cavern sealed with a sheet 

 of stalagmite, which was partially broken up, and considerable portions of 

 the subjacent beds were dislodged before the introduction of the beds next 

 deposited. 



3rd. The Great Bone Bed, both at Brixham and Torquay, consisted of 

 red clayey loam, with a large per-centage of angular fragments of lime- 

 stone ; and contained flake implements of flint and chert, inosculating 

 with remains of Mammoth, the tichorhine Rhinoceros, and Hyaena. In 

 fine, the Cave-earth of Kent's Hole and the Third Bed of Brixham Cavern 

 correspond in their materials, in their osseous contents, and in their flint 

 tools. They both belong to what I have named the Hyoinine period of the 

 Torquay Cave. 



But, as already stated, there are points in which the two Caverns 

 differ : — 



1st. Whilst Kent's Hole was the home of Man, as well as of the con- 

 temporary Hysena during the absences of the human occupant, there is no 

 reason to suppose that either Man or any of the lower animals ever did 

 more than make occasional visits to Brixham Cave. The latter contained 

 no flint chips, no bone tools, no utilized Pecilew-shells, no bits of charcoal, 

 and no coprolites of Hysena, all of which occurred in the Cave-earth of 

 Kent's Hole. 



2nd. In the Torquay Cave relics of Hysena were much more abundant 

 in the Cave-earth than those of any other species. Taking the teeth 

 alone, of which vast numbers were found, those of the Hysena amounted 

 to about 30 per cent, of the entire series, notwithstanding the fact that, com- 

 pared with most of the Cave-mammals, his jaws, when furnished completely, 

 possess but few teeth. At Brixham, on the other hand, his relics of all 

 kinds amovmted to no more than 8*5 per cent, of all the osseous remains, 

 whilst those of the Bear rose to 53 per cent. 



3rd. The entrances of Brixham Cavern were completely filled up and its 

 history suspended not later than the end of the Palseolithic era. Nothing 

 occurred within it from the days when Devonshire was occupied by the 

 Cave and Grizzly Bears, Reindeer, Rhinoceros, Cave Lion, Mammoth, and 

 Man, whose best tools were unpolished flints, until the quarrymen broke 

 into it early in a.d. 1851. Kent's Cavern, on the contrary, seems to have 

 never been closed, never unvisited by Man, from the earliest Palaeolithic 

 times to our own, with the possible exception of the Neolithic era, of 

 which it cannot be said to have yielded any certain evidence. 



Though my History of Cavern Exploration in Devonshire is now com- 

 pleted, so far as the time at my disposal will allow, and so far as the 

 materials are at present rij)e for the historian, I venture to ask your 

 further indulgence for a few brief moments whilst passing from the region 

 of Fact to that of Inference. 



That the Kent's-Hole men of the Hyseuine period — to say nothing at 

 present of their predecessors of the Breccia — belonged to the Pleistocene 

 times of the Biologist, is seen in the fact that they were contemporary 

 with Mammals peculiar to, and characteristic of, those times. This 

 contemporaneity proves them to have belonged to the Palceolithic era of 

 Britain and Western Europe generally, as defined by the Archaeologist ; 



