1863.] dawkins — hy^:na-den near wells. 273 



vicinity, while Rhinoceros hemitoechus here, as at Kirkdale, associ- 

 ated with R. tichorhinus, may perhaps refer it to the earlier part of 

 the newer Pliocene period*. 



2. Evidences of Human Occupation. — Let us now pass on to the 

 evidences of human occupation. All the ashes and implements were 

 found in positions, near the mouth of the cave, where man himself 

 may have placed them (see figs. 1 to 8), with the exception of an 

 ash of bone imbedded in the earthy matrix between the canine tooth 

 and a coprolite of the Hyaena, and cemented to a fragment of dolo- 

 mitic conglomerate. This was found far in the cave, either at the 

 entrance of the passage B or in the middle of the passage D. The 

 latter passage yielded the only rolled flint without traces of man's 

 handiwork. The materials out of which the implements were made 

 were used pretty equally. All the spear-heads were of flint ; all the 

 sling- stones of chert from the Upper Greensand ; while the flakes 

 consisted of both, used indifferently. Besides these three typical 

 forms, w T hich were most abundant, is a fourth, in form roughly 

 pyramidal, with a smooth and flat base, and a cutting edge all round. 

 Of these we found but two examples, both consisting of chert. In 

 form they are exactly similar to some hundreds found in a Celtic 

 village at Stanlake, and to others I discovered in a cemetery of the 

 same date at Yarnton, near Oxford. They strongly resemble a cast 

 I have of one found by M. Lartet in the cave of Aurignac. Were it 

 not for this similarity, I should look upon them as accidental forms. 

 The rest are mere splinters, irregular in form, and probably made 

 in the manufacture of the various flint and chert implements. All 

 the flint implements have been strangely altered in colour and 

 structure, either by heat or, as is more probable, by some chemical 

 action. Without exception, the old surfaces present a waxy lustre 

 (by the absence of which forgeries are easily detected), the colour is 

 of a uniform milk-white, and the ordinary conchcidal fracture is re- 

 placed by that of porcelain. Some are not harder than chalk. I 

 have obtained weathered and calcined flints from Sussex in which 

 similar changes are observable, and in which the difference in the 

 results of chemical action and heat can hardly be detected. The 

 chert implements, on the other hand, show no traces of any such 

 changes, but are similar in colour and structure to the rocks from 

 which they came — the Upper Greensand of the Blackdown Hills. 



The inferiority of workmanship, on comparison with the imple- 

 ments of Amiens and Abbeville, and of Hoxne, may possibly indicate 

 a higher antiquity, and certainly shows that the Wookey Hole savages 

 were of a lower order than the Flint-folk of the valley of the Somme, 

 or of Suffolk. If also the complete whitening and the total absence 

 of conchoidal fracture in these implements, as compared with the 

 fracture and natural colour of those from the above well-known 

 localities, in which the decomposition is but skin-deep, and causes 

 but a waxy lustre, be any evidence of antiquity, the former are of a 

 far earlier date than the latter. 



* Comp. Dr. Falconer, "On the Ossiferous Caves of the Peninsula of Gower," 

 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xvi. p. 491. 



