PLEISTOCENE CAVE-DEPOSITS. 119 



pauied by domesticated animals, and in some cases occupied 

 well -constructed houses, which doubtless for security's sake 

 were built in lakes ; and in many other respects he was 

 decidedly in advance even of the artistic hunters of the Rein- 

 deer period. 



The geological position in which the relics of Neolithic 

 times are found, bears emphatic testimony to the lapse of time 

 that separates the close of the Old Stone Age in Europe from 

 the beginning of the succeeding New Stone or Neolithic Period. 

 The implements belonging to the latter epoch occupy invariably 

 a superficial position — they occur either lying loosely at the 

 surface or embedded at no great depth, in accumulations which 

 can be shown to be of very recent date, geologically speaking. 

 In undisturbed cave-deposits they are never commingled with 

 the relics of the older period, but are not infrequently separated 

 from these by sheets of stalagmite, accumulations of earth and 

 (Mbris, or beds of clay, silt, sand, gravel, and other materials. 

 Several good examples of this character have already been 

 given. Thus in Kent's Cave we have seen that the archaic 

 and more modern remains rested upon a bed of granular 

 stalagmite, in and underneath which only did Palaeolithic 

 implements and the bones of the extinct mammalia occur. 

 All these had been sealed up and the cave had been long 

 abandoned before it was again tenanted by man. In the 

 interim many large and small blocks had fallen from the roof 

 and accumulated upon the floor. Again, after the cave at 

 Brixham had been for a long time open to the visits of Palaeo- 

 lithic man and of hyaenas and other animals of the period, it 

 was finally deserted, and an accumulation of stones, dislodged 

 by the action of the weather, gradually blocked up the entrance, 

 so that the cave was never subsequently tenanted by man. 

 But the evidence supplied by the Victoria Cave at Settle is still 

 more remarkable, for we there discover that after the land had 

 been for a long time occupied by hyaenas, elephants, hippo- 

 potamuses, and other animals, a cold climate supervened, and 

 a great glacier crept down the valley of the Eibble ; and it was 



