258 KENT'S HOLE. 



The hesitation, however, with which the statements of 

 Dr. Schmerling were received by scientific men arose no 

 doubt partly from the fact that some of the fossil remains 

 discovered by him were certainly referred to wrong species, 

 and partly because, with reference to several of the extinct 

 species, and especially to the mammoth, he expressed the 

 opinion that the remains had been brought from a distance, 

 and had very likely been washed out of some earlier bed. 

 "Nous n'hesitons point," he says, "& exprimer ici notre 

 pensee, c'est que nous doutons fort que 1'elephant, lors de 

 1'epoque du remplissage de nos cavernes, habitat nos con- 

 trees. Au contraire, nous croyons plutot que ces restes 

 ont ete ameries de Join, ou bien que ces debris ont ete 

 deplaces d'un terrain plus ancieii et. ont te entraines dans 

 les cavernes." 



Even, therefore, though Dr. Sdtunerling might be quite 

 right in his conclusion that the human remains had been 

 "enfouis dans ces cavernes 'a la meme epoque, et par con- 

 sequent par les-memes causes qui y ont entraine une masse 

 d'ossements de differentes espeees eteintes," still it would not 

 necessarily follow that man had lived at the same period as 

 these extinct species. 



In the year 1840 Mr. Godwin Austen communicated 

 to the Geological Society > a -memoir on the Geology 

 of the South East . of 'Devonshire,* and in his description 

 of Kent's Hole, near Torquay, ' he says that '"human re- 

 mains and works of art, such as arrow-heads and .knives 

 of flint, occur ; in -alL parts of the cave and throughout the 

 entire thickness- of the clay: and no distinction founded 

 on condition, distribution, or relative position, can be ob- 

 served, whereby the human can be separated from the 

 other reliquiae," which included bones of the "elephant, 



* Transactions of the Geol. Soc. Ser. 2, yol. vi. p. 433. 



