332 A Geological Problem. [July, 



quarrying the lime-rock. On visiting it he found the roof 

 beautifully studded with stalactites, whilst the floor was a 

 thick stratum of stalagmite extending from side to side. 

 This floor rested on a mass of dark red very tenacious clay, 

 throughout which bones of extinct and recent animals were 

 mixed indiscriminately. Mr. Wrey obtained a large number 

 of these remains, including an undoubted human skull, 

 very perfect and in good preservation, found with the other 

 relics. Believing the case to be unique and important, he 

 at once wrote to Dr. Buckland, who lost no time in repairing 

 to the spot, where he spent three days as Mr. Wrey's guest. 

 For the explication of the facts, Dr. Buckland suggested 

 that a human body had been buried in the clay, and thus 

 the remains of man and of the much older extinct mammals 

 had become mixed, after which the sheet of stalagmite had 

 been formed over the whole. " This hypothesis," said Mr. 

 Wrey, " was never satisfactory to my mind, because the 

 human bones should have been "lying together in the form of 

 a skeleton, but instead of this they were mixed through the 

 clay with the other bones." Many of the remains, including 

 the human skull, were presented to Dr. Buckland, who ex- 

 pressed his intention of placing them in the Museum at 

 Oxford. 



The late Dr. Schmerling, of Liege, having carried on 

 extensive researches in the numerous caverns in the Valley 

 of the Meuse, published the results of his labours in 

 1833-4,* anc * stated that the deposits in many of the caverns 

 were covered with a floor of unbroken stalagmite, and 

 contained the commingled remains of extinct and recent 

 animals, including man ; that the human relics were of the 

 same colour and in the same condition as those of the lower 

 animals ; and that they were so rolled and scattered as to 

 show that they were not intentionally buried there. 



Amongst the human relics found by Dr. Schmerling were 

 several skulls, the most perfect of which, known as the 

 Engis skull, from the cavern in which it was found, has 

 attracted much attention, and according to Professor Huxley, 

 is " a fair average human skull, which might have belonged 

 to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless 

 brains of a savage. "t 



In 1840 Mr. Godwin-Austen read to the Geological Society 

 of London a paper on "The Bone Gaves of Devonshire," 

 which, with other papers on the same district, was published 



* Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles Deccuverts dans les Cavernes de la 

 Province de Liege. See also Lyell's Antiquity of Man, pp. 63 — 74. 

 f Man's Place in Nature, p. 156. 



