124 CAVES AT ENGIHOUL AND BRIXHAM. [Ch. X. 



abounds in caverns, is a fertile soil, in which vegetable matter is con- 

 tinually decaying. This mould or humus, being acted on by moisture 

 and air, evolves carbonic acid, which is dissolved by rain. The rain 

 water, thus impregnated, permeates tie porous limestone, dissolves a 

 portion of it, and afterwards, when the excess of carbonic acid evap- 

 orates in the caverns, parts with the calcareous matter, and forms 

 stalactite. Even while caverns are still liable to be occasionally flooded 

 such calcareous incrustations accumulate, but it is generally when they 

 are no longer in the line of drainage that a solid floor of hard stalag- 

 mite is found on the bottom. On the whole, the circumstances under 

 which an organic body is usually introduced into a cave are far 

 more favourable to its preservation than those which accompany its 

 envelopment in valley-alluvium ; for where the mud or stones are 

 connected together by carbonate of line, the free percolation of 

 water, and consequent decay and removal of the bones or shells, are 

 arrested. 



The late Dr. Schmerling examined forty caves near Liege, and found 

 in all of them the remains of the same fauna, comprising the mam- 

 moth tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-hyaena,, cave-lion, and many 

 others, some of extinct and some of living species, and in all of them 

 flint implements. In four or five caves only parts of human skeletons 

 were met with, comprising sometimes skulls with a few other bones, 

 sometimes nearly every part of the skeleton except the skull. In one 

 of the caves, that of Engihoul, where Schmerling had found the re- 

 mains of at least three human individuals, they were mingled in such 

 a manner with bones of extinct mammalia, as to leave no doubt on his 

 mind of man having coexisted with them. 



In 1860, Professor Malaise, of Liege, explored with me this same 

 cave of Engihoul, and beneath a hard floor of stalagmite we found 

 mud full of the bones of extinct and living animals, such as Schmer- 

 ling had described, and my companion, persevering in his researches 

 after I had returned to England, extracted from the same deposit two 

 human lower jaw-bones retaining their teeth. The skulls from these 

 Belgian caverns display no marked deviation from the normal Euro- 

 pean type of the present day. One of them, for example, obtained 

 by Schmerling from the Engis cave, situated on the left bank of the 

 Meuse, is now preserved in the museum of the University of Liege, 

 and agrees with the long-headed type (fig. 105, p. 113), and not with 

 the short round form which seems, in Scandinavia at least, to have 

 been the more ancient of the two. 



The careful investigations carried on by Dr. Falconer, Mr. Pengelly, 

 and others, in the Brixham cave near Torquay, in 1858, demonstrated 

 that flint knives were there embedded in such a manner in loam 

 underlying a floor of stalagmite as to prove that man had been an 

 inhabitant of that region when the cave-bear and other members of 

 the ancient post-pliocene fauna were also in existence. 



The certainty of the data on which this conclusion was founded 



