﻿430 Reports and Proceedings — British Association. 



and this is fully confirmed by their unpolished tools of flint and chert. 

 That they were prior to the deposition of even the oldest part of the Peat 

 Bogs of Denmark, with their successive layers of Beech, Pedunculated 

 Oak, Sessile Oak, and Scotch Fir, we learn from the facts that even the 

 lowest zone of the bogs has yielded no bones of mammals but those of 

 recent species, and no tools but those of Neolithic type ; whilst even the 

 Granular Stalagmite, the uppermost of the Hysenine beds in Kent's Hole, 

 has afibrded relics of Mammoth, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Cave Bear, and 

 Cave Hysena. 



That the men of the Cave Breccia, or Ursine period, to whom we now 

 tiirn, were of still higher antiquity, is obvious from the geological position 

 of their industrial remains. That the two races of Troglodytes were 

 separated by a wide interval of time we learn from the Crystalline Stalag- 

 mite, sometimes 12 feet thick, laid down after the deposition of the 

 Breccia had ceased, and before the introduction of the Cave-earth had 

 begun, as w^ell as from the entire change in the materials composing the 

 two deposits. But, perhaps, the fact which most emphatically indicates 

 the chronological value of this interval is the difference in the faunas. In 

 the Cave-earth, as already stated, the remains of the Hysena greatly 

 exceed in number those of any other mammal ; and it may be added that 

 he is also disclosed by almost every relic of his contemj)oraries — their 

 jaws have, through his agency, lost their condyles and lower boixlers ; 

 their bones are fractured after a fashion known by experiment to be his ; 

 and the splinters into which they are broken are deeply scored with his 

 teeth-marks. His jiresence is also attested by the abundance of his 

 droppings in every branch of the Cavern. In short, Kent's Hole was one 

 of his homes; he dragged thither, piecemeal, such animals as he found 

 dead near it ; and the well-known habits of his representatives of our day 

 have led us to expect all this from him. When, however, we turn to the 

 Breccia, a very clifferent spectacle awaits us. We meet with no trace 

 whatever of his presence, not a single relic of his skeleton, not a bone on 

 which he has operated, not a coprolite to mark as much as a visit. Can 

 it be doubted tlaat had he then occupied our country he would have taken 

 up his abode in our Cavern 1 Need we hesitate to regard this entire 

 absence of all traces of so decided a cave-dweller as a proof that he had 

 not yet made his advent in Britain ? Are we not compelled to believe 

 that Man formed part of the Devonshire fauna long before the Hysena 

 did ? Is there any method of escaping the conclusion that between the 

 era of the Breccia and that of the Cave-earth it was possible for the 

 Hysena to reach Britain 1 — in other words, that the last^ continental state 

 of our country occurred during that interval ? I confess that, in the 

 present state of the evidence, I see no escape ; and that the conclusion 

 thus forced on me compels me to believe also that the earliest men of 

 Kent's Hole were interglacial, if not preglacial. 



The following Table will serve to show at one view the co-ordinations 

 and theoretical conclusions to which the facts of Kent's Cavern have led 

 me, as stated briefly in the foregoing remarks. The Table, it will be seen, 

 consists of two Divisions, separated with double vertical lines. The first, 

 or left hand, Division contains three columns, and relates exclusively to 

 Kent's Cavern, as is indicated by the words heading it. The second, 

 or right hand. Division is of a more general character, and shows the 

 recognized classification of well-known facts throughout Western Europe. 

 The horizontal lines are intended to convey the idea of more or less well- 

 defined chronological horizons ; and their occasional continuity through 

 two or more columns denotes contemporaneity. Thus, to take an example 

 from the two columns headed " Archaeological " and " Danish-Bog," in 

 the second Division : the horizontal line passing continuously through 



