PLEISTOCENE CAVE-DEPOSITS. 89 



gave greatly increased room in the cave, and hence it became a 

 place of resort for such animals as hysenas and bears, and was 

 occasionally visited by Palaeolithic man. By and by, when 

 flood- water no longer reached the cave, the formation of stalag- 

 mite, which had been going on during the intervals between 

 successive inundations, proceeded without interruption, and the 

 remains of such predatory animals as continued to frequent the 

 cave, together with the bones of their prey, became sealed up in 

 the calcareous drip. Eventually, however, the entrances to the 

 cave were closed with an accumulation of debris, and "from 

 that time it ceased to be accessible, except to the smaller rodents 

 and burrowing animals, and remained unused and untrodden 

 until its discovery in 1858." 



Here then we have evidence, first, of the contemporaneity of 

 man and the old mammalia; and, second, of the extreme antiquity 

 of the period during which they were in joint occupation of 

 Southern England. At the time when the cave first began to 

 be visited by the mammalia and Palaeolithic man the valley of 

 Brixham was 70 or 80 feet less deep than now ; in other words, 

 so long a time has elapsed since then, that the streams of that 

 district have been able to excavate their beds in hard rock to a 

 depth of not far short of 100 feet. 



