274 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Feb. 4, 



All the fragments of calcined bone, with the exception of one 

 already mentioned, were found near the entrance (see fig. 1), and in a 

 place more suitable for a lire than any other in the cave. I can 

 identify none of them as human. The coarse texture, the structure, 

 and the thickness of one indicate a fragment of a long bone of Rhi- 

 noceros *. All resemble many splinters strewn about in other parts 

 of the cave, which are not calcined, but were evidently introduced by 

 the Hyaenas. The calcination may therefore be due to the accident 

 of their lying upon the surface at the time the fire was kindled. The 

 presence .of the ashes indicates the occupation of the cave by man. 



3. Conclusion. — The whole body of evidence f tends to prove that 

 man, in one of the earlier stages of his being, dwelt in this cave ; that 

 in it he manufactured his implements out of flint from the chalk- 

 downs of Wilts, and from the less fragile chert from the Greensand 

 of the Blackdown Hills, and arrow-heads out of the chert and the 

 more easily fashioned bone ; and that, beyond all doubt, he was a 

 contemporary with the extinct fauna found, with the traces of his 

 existence, in the cave. Then after an interval, in which much of 

 the fauna became extinct, and in which the whole of the district 

 was considerably depressed, we again meet with traces of man in the 

 coarse pottery and the human teeth found by Dr. Buckland in the 

 great Wookey Hole cavern %. And, lastly, the discovery of coins of 

 Allectus, Comes littoris Saxonici, together with skeletons near the 

 Hyaena-den, brings us down to the fourth or fifth century after 

 Christ. Thus Palaeontology shades off into Archaeology, and that into 

 History, and each, taking up the thread where the other dropped 

 it," shows the intimate relation between sciences formerly considered 

 to have little or no bearing upon each other. Until, however, there 

 are data for estimating the magnitude of the breaks in the suc- 

 cession, it is impossible to reduce the interval between ourselves and 

 the Flint-folk to the scale of time used in history. The supplanting 

 of one species by another, and the oscillations in the level of the 

 surface, prove that the lapse of time was enormous, but they do not 

 warrant us in reducing it to any definite number of years. 



2. On the Discovery of Paradoxides in Britain. 

 By J. W. Salter, Esq., F.G.S., A.L.S. 



During a few days' holiday in South Pembrokeshire last summer, I 

 went to the neighbourhood of St. David's. I wished to see the 

 Cambrian and Lower Silurian beds recently mapped by Mr. T. Ave- 

 line, and to learn if they presented the same characters as the corre- 



* Possibly it may have belonged to Elephas, but its coarse texture seems to 

 me to indicate Rhinoceros. 



t For arguments on the relation of the traces of man to the organic remains, 

 see Quart. Journ. Greol. Soc. vol. xviii. p. 119. 

 Diluv. p. 165. 



