294 In Touch with Nature. 



or more feet in length. But we were not fright- 

 ened. Bit by bit we turned it over, and how all 

 thought of drudgery disappeared when the pot- 

 sherds came to light! Then bones, broken into 

 small fragments, fire-cracked pebbles, more pottery 

 and flint chips. One by one these were spread out 

 to dry, and made a goodly show when the last 

 shovelful of earth was overturned. And now, 

 what of the story they told ? Here is one of the 

 delights of archaeological research : to reconstruct 

 the past after the digging is done, which is legiti- 

 mate, and something very different from the theo- 

 retical archaeology that occasionally crops out in 

 the pages of learned reviews and believed because 

 of its prominence. 



The result, as we considered it, was that the 

 cave had not been continuously inhabited, but 

 frequently and for many years. The debris upon 

 the floor was not in thin layers, and so to be ex- 

 amined as the leaves of a book ; but whatever we 

 found was scattered through the mass and bore 

 no relation directly to other subjects. The char- 

 coal was in little pockets, as if for a single night 

 had a fire been kindled. But that these fires were 



