INTRODUCTION. 



§ 1 . In going backward in time from the historical period in Britain, we find ourselves 

 landed in the realms of archgeology without any guide to absolute date, and without any 

 connected record of events previous to the first landing of Julius Caesar upon our shores. 

 The investigation of the contents of peat-mosses, of alluvia of rivers, and of a large number 

 of caverns occupies our attention ; and while the remains of man are widely spread, we miss 

 the larger Camivora, the Pachydermata, and others of the Pleistocene Mammaha. For 

 this period, as embracing the deposits more usually termed recent, and extending from the 

 Pleistocene down to the beginning of history, we adopt the name Prehistoric. It is 

 eminently the field of the archaeologist, who subdivides it, according to the traces of man 

 that it contains, into the iron, bronze, polished stone, rude unpolished stone, and flint 

 periods.^ Prom his point of view we have nothing to do with it ; but for the sake of 

 showing the relation of the Pleistocene fauna to that now living in Britain, we are obHged 

 to treat it zoologically. It forms a distinct zoological period, separable from the Pleisto- 

 cene, but passing insensibly into the Historic period. 



% 2, A. PreJdstoric caverns. — Caverns, as affording shelter from the weather, have been 

 the resort of man and wild animals in all times, from the Pleistocene to the present day. 

 Hence, very frequently in the same cave remains of difierent epochs are found. In Kent's 

 Hole, for instance, overlying the mass of bones dragged in by hyaenas in Pleistocene 

 times, and in parts hermetically sealed by stalagmite, there was a stratum of dark earth 

 containing the remains of the feasts and fires of some early people — bone implements, 

 chert and flint arrowheads, " a hatchet of syenite," sandstone spindles, shells of mussel, 

 limpet, and oyster, a palate of Scarus, and numerous fragments of pottery. This last " is 

 of the rudest description, made of coarse gritty earth, not turned on a lathe, and sun- 

 baked ; on its external margin it bears zigzag indentations, not unlike those from the 

 barrows of Wilts." Its ornamentation and texture are like those of the rude pottery obtained 



1 See Sir John Lubbock's ' Prehistoric Man,' 8vo, 1865. London. 



