X INTRODUCTION. 



m 



by the Earl of Enniskillen, P.R.S., from the Bears' Den of Kiihloch, and that from the Pile- 

 dwellings of Switzerland in the collection of the lateMr.H. Christy. In some places the stalag- 

 mite had been broken through, apparently for purposes of sculpture; and human bones, and 

 flints of aU forms, " from the rounded pebble, as it came out of the chalk, to the instruments 

 fabricated from them, as the arrow- and spear-heads, and hatchets, were confusedly dis- 

 seminated through the earth, and the whole agglutinated together by stalagmite. Flint 

 cores were lying by the sides of the flakes struck from them."^ The remains also of the 

 wild boar, red deer, fox, rabbit, and rodentia, were obtained from the same layer, and are 

 in part preserved in the Museums of London and Oxford. The metatarsals and -carpals 

 in the Oxford Museum, obtained from the upper portions of the contents of the cavern in 

 association wdth charcoal, belong to the small short-horn Bos longifrons. 



To the absolute date of these remains there is at present no clue ; but that the cave 

 was inhabited after, to the disappearance of the characteristic Pleistocene mammalia 

 found in the cavern, by savages closely allied to those whose remains are found in hut- 

 circles and tumuli, there can be no doubt. The careful exploration no^v being conducted 

 by the British Association will doubtless throw great light upon the relative age of the 

 various layers, and possibly the absolute age of some of the superior ones. 



% 2, B. The Paviland cave, described by Dr. Buckland, afibrds another instance of the 

 mixture of Pleistocene and Prehistoric remains. To the one period belong the elephant, 

 rhinoceros, horse, and hyaena ; to the other, the human skeleton (w^hich equals in size 

 the largest male skeleton in the Oxford Museum), the bones of ox and sheep, the 

 whelk, Umpet, littorina, and trochus, that had been introduced for food. Certain small 

 ivory ornaments found along with the skeletons Dr. Buckland considers to have been 

 made from the tusks of the mammoth in the same cavern, and he justly remarks — " As 

 they must have been cut to their present shape at a time when the ivory was hard, and 

 not crumbling to pieces, as it is at present on the slightest touch, we may from this 

 circumstance assume for them a very high antiquity."- May we not also infer from the 

 fact of the manufactured ivory, and the tusks from which it was cut, being in precisely 

 the same state of decomposition, that the tusks were preserved from decay during the 

 Pleistocene times by precisely the same agency as those now found perfect in the Polar 

 regions — by the intense cold ; that long after the mammoth had become extinct the 

 tusks thus preserved were used by some race that has passed away ; and that at some 

 time subsequent to the interment of the ornaments with the corpse a great climatal 

 change has taken place, by which the temperature in England, Prance, and Germany has 

 been raised, and decomposition set in in the organic remains that up to that time had re- 

 mained for ages in their natural condition? The presence of the remains of sheep under- 



1 'Cavern Researches,' by the late Rev. J. MacEuery, F.G.S., edited by E. Vivian, Esq., 4to, 1859 

 (the larger edition). 



2 Bucklanr^, ' Reliquiae Diluvianae,' 4to, 2nd edit., 1824, p. 90. 



