AND HIS COTEMPOKARIES. 587 



the Seven Hills upon which Rome is built, 'bearing his 

 organs of locomotion and digestion all but unchanged,' 

 through an enormous lapse of ages. 1 



V. 



Another important branch of the same investigation re- 

 mained to be followed up — namely, an analysis of the fossil 

 fauna of the ossiferous caverns of Great Britain, conducted 

 upon the same plan ; and as the reagitation of the question 

 of the remote antiquity of the human race in Europe, and 

 the establishment of the evidence, to the conviction of 

 geologists, arose out of it as immediate results, I must be 

 pardoned for entering in some detail upon the history of the 

 question. 



Bone caves occur generally over Europe, but they are 

 especially abundant hi England, Germany, France, Italy, and 

 Sicily. The fossil remains found in them had been carefully 

 studied by Cuvier and by various other palaeontologists, in 

 different countries, since his time. The theory of the process 

 of their filling up, with their organic contents, had been 

 keenly discussed by Dr. Buckland and by Constant Prevost, 

 who entertained diametrically opposed views upon the ques- 

 tion. A great number of other cryptological observers, after 

 them, took a share in the discussion ; and an excellent 

 epitome of the whole case was brought out by Desnoyers, in 

 a monograph which appeared in 1849. But at the period 

 to which I refer, 1856, the views of geologists, respecting 

 the epoch when the fossil quadrupeds whose remains occur 

 in them lived and were there introduced, were in a very 

 unsettled state. Desnoyers left the question as he found it, 

 undetermined. For the prevalent opinions held in Eng- 

 land, I shall refer to standard systematic works, by two 

 eminent living authorities, Professor John Phillips and Sir 

 Charles Lyell. The former, to whom we are indebted for 

 the systematic use of the terms Preglactal and Post- 

 glacial, which define with such precision the Quaternary 

 deposits before and after the submergence of the Glacial period, 

 in his ' Manual of Geology,' published in 1855, expresses his 

 opinion, in the clearest language : ' To the Preglacial era 

 belong, we think, the greater number of ossiferous caves 

 and fissures, containing Elephant, Hippopotamus, Hyaena, 

 and other extinct species of animals.' (Op. cit. p. 411.) Sir 

 Charles Lyell, in the fifth edition of his ' Manual,' published 

 in 1855, takes a similar view, and classes the caves in 

 Chap. xiii. among the newer Pliocene formations, below or 



1 See antea, p. 239.— [Ed.] 



