94 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



than the poor savages whose relics are found associated with 

 the bones and teeth of bears in the bottom-deposits. All these 

 changes imply time, and are indicative, perhaps, of great geo- 

 graphical mutations. Mr. Pengelly thinks it probable that 

 during the occupation of the cave by the great bears of the 

 breccia, Britain was an island, and that the hyaena and its con- 

 geners came at a later date, when our country formed part of 

 the Continent. This is a question, however, to which we shall 

 return by and by. For the present I am content if I can aid 

 the reader in realising the fact of the prolonged duration of the 

 Palaeolithic Period. 



I have made special reference to Brixham Cave and Kent's 

 Hole because they were the first to be investigated with such 

 care and scientific caution as were required to set at rest the 

 vexed question as to man's contemporaneity with the extinct 

 mammalia of Pleistocene times. Many other English caves have 

 been examined, with the result of increasing our knowledge of 

 the old mammalian fauna, and adding a few more touches to the 

 picture of Palaeolithic savage life. But the main features of the 

 evidence may still be read in the successive floor-accumulations 

 of the famous Devonshire caverns. We have seen that those 

 caves now and again were occupied by hyaenas, who dragged 

 thither their prey, and left the floor encumbered with heaps of 

 gnawed bones. Frequently their coprolites are very abundant, 

 and now and again the walls of the narrower passages of a cave 

 are rubbed smooth, as if by the constant passing to and fro of 

 the hyaenas, while the jaws and other bones that lay sunk in the 

 floor are smoothed and polished by their tread. Hyaena-dens have 

 been discovered in various parts of England, among which the 

 most interesting are Kirkdale Cave, described by Dr. Buck] and, 1 

 and Wookey Hole, near Wells, on the south side of the Mendip 

 Hills, of which a graphic account is given by Mr. Boyd Dawkins. 2 

 The latter cave furnished abundant evidence of the former pre- 



1 Reliquiae, Diluviance, p. 38. 



2 Cave-hunting, p. 295 ; see also Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xix. p. 260 ; 

 Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil. Soc, vol. ix. (1870), p. 181. 



