446 Mr, Austen on the 



some remote time, just as closely allied species now do in other regions : that some of the fossil species 

 may differ slightly from existing ones does not affect the question, as the man of that period may have 

 differed as much, or belonged to a more southern type. Few, I imagine, who are acquainted with the 

 facts which the labours of MM. Schmerling, Marcel de Serres, and others have established, entertain 

 any doubts as to the fact that the bones of man have been found in caves ; what I wish to state distinctly 

 is, that they occur in Kent's Cave under precisely the same conditions as the bones of all the other 

 animals. The value of such a statement must rest on the care with which a collector may have ex- 

 plored ; I must therefore state that my own researches were constantly conducted in parts of the cave 

 which had never been disturbed, and in every instance the bones were procured from beneath a thick 

 covering of stalagmite ; so far then, the bones and works of man must have been introduced into the cave 

 before the flooring of stalagmite had been formed. It may be suggested, that this cave was used as a 

 place of sepulture by some early inhabitants of this country, and that bones of the other animals occu- 

 pied the lower parts of the cave when such sepulture took place- 

 In this case our researches should expose the human skeletons entire, as in the Paviland Cave ; or 

 at least the bones should occur in some sort of mutual relation to each other, but no such thing has 

 ever been observed by any explorer in Kent's Hole ; so that as far as the evidence from this cave is to be 

 our guide (and which is all that we should look to), there is no ground why we should separate man 

 from that period, and those accidents, when and by which the cave was filled. 



The favourite habitats of beasts of prey, in a wild state, are warm and dry situations ; and at the time 

 when, as we may fairly assume, the country was tliickly covered with forests and swamps — the range of 

 the horse, the ox, and the large Pachyderms, — we cannot well imagine spots better suited to Carnivora 

 than the great tabular masses of limestone, with their caves and crevices, which the surface of South 

 Devon presented. It would be to such spots that they would retreat with their prey. So that in the 

 lapse of time the surfaces would be strewed with the teeth and harder portions of every animal of the 

 country and period ; just as, according to all accounts, the vicinity of the haunts of the large Carnivora 

 is at the present day. Any subsequent inundation, such as that which other considerations have esta- 

 blished, would carry forward with it all the animal remains, and leave them, together with detached blocks 

 of limestone, mud, sand, and foreign rocks, in every open chasm and depression. 



In support of this there are evident marks about most of the bones from the osseous breccias, that they 

 had long been exposed to the air before they were buried in the clay. Had all the various animals 

 whose bones have been collected, fallen into these chasms, portions of each animal should occur, and in 

 nearly their proper relations ; but there has never been observed the slightest tendency to such a con- 

 dition. Very little personal search among these masses of breccia will be sufficient to convince any 

 observer, that casualties of this sort cannot account for the scattered fragments of bone he may discover 

 in them. Animals may have so perished ; but such cases must be considered exceptions to the process 

 by which the fissures were filled. 



§ 3. Surface-accumulations at higher levels. — Over most parts of the district here 

 described, particularly within the combes of the new red sandstone series, are thick 

 accumulations of local debris, as if during the formation of the valleys the finer particles 

 had been removed and the coarser alone left. In the Dawlish vallev, associated with 

 materials from the new red conglomerate strata, are others derived from the cretaceous 

 series, the whole mass being upwards of forty feet thick (PI. XLII. fig. 5.). Similar 

 accumulations are scattered over the whole of that part of Devon which intervenes 

 between the Haldons and Blackdowns ; and those in the valley of the Otter present 

 as great an admixture as the deposits of Dawlish ; but proceeding eastward, as in 



