Vol. 60.] HUMAN REMAINS IN GOUGH/S CAVERN, CHEDDAR. 347 



bed of calcareous deposit from 5 to 14 inches thick, I 

 conclude that the human remains are probably of late 

 Palaeolithic age (Magdalenien of Mortillet), and that in 

 them we have a valuable addition to those of perhaps earlier 

 date found at Tilbury and Bury St. Edmunds, and the 

 undoubted Neolithic skeletons buried in the Perthi-Chwaren 

 caves or the barrows of Yorkshire and Wales. 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE XXIX. 



Human skull found beneath the stalagmite-floor of Gough's Cavern. 



Fig. 1. Right side. Showing the prominent supra-orbital ridge and the 

 receding forehead ; also the peculiar forward direction of the mastoid 

 processes, which would seem to indicate that the neck was short and 

 thick. 



2. Front view. The face is much mutilated, and filled with a concrete 



of cave-earth and calcareous cement. This view shows well the 

 regularity of the teeth in the lower jaw, and its extreme width. 



3. Left side. The thickness of the frontal bone is well shown. Parts of 



the cranium are still encrusted with calcareous and earthy material. 

 The lower jaw has become slightly twisted in this view, 



Discussion. 



The Rev. H. H. Win wood, while alluding to the value of such 

 discoveries as that so carefully described by the Author, gave his 

 reasons for doubting the great antiquity of the human remains. 

 In the first place, evidence of the association of the bones of the 

 extinct animals found in the cave-earth with the skeleton was 

 lacking ; secondly, he enquired whether the friable bed of carbonate 

 of lime overlying the bones, so friable that it crumbled at the 

 touch, was stalagmitic in the usual accepted sense ; and thirdly, 

 the flint-flakes found in the earth with the remains were (in his 

 opinion) of a distinctly-Neolithic type, and similar to many that he 

 had found on the surface of the neighbouring hills. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins said that the Fellows were extremely 

 indebted to the Author for putting on record the facts of this 

 interesting discoverv. But it involved no more evidence of the 

 precise antiquity of the deposits than that brought forward from 

 many other caverns. Indeed, it was impossible to explore any 

 series of caverns in any part of this country without finding human 

 remains. Stalagmite was of practically no value as evidence for 

 age. In 1877 he (the speaker) examined the stalagmite of 

 Ingleborough Cave, previously examined by Prof. Phillips in 1845, 

 and he was able to determine the rate of accumulation of stalagmite 

 as being three-tenths of an inch per annum. It was true that 

 the flint-flakes exhibited appeared to be Neolithic, but such 

 implements were in use as late as the Bronze Age. The tibia 

 shewn by the Author was, after all, but slightly platycnemic, and 

 platycnemism had no relation to race ; it implied merely the free 

 use of the foot, confined at most in moccasins. The great majority 

 of Neolithic skeletons possessed a platycnemic tibia. Nor was the 



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