3 



their present burial places by similar causes to those now in action, 

 and not by any wide-sweeping catastrophe, such as was assumed by 

 the advocates of a universal deluge. 



There was (1824-5) a highly intelligent Eoman Catholic Priest 

 living at Torquay, the Eev. J. McEnery, who, having examined a 

 certain cavern, known as " Kent's Hole," discovered flint implements 

 of undoubted human workmanship associated with bones of the 

 Mammoth, the tichorhine Ehinoceros, cave-bear, and other mam- 

 malia, about the contemporaneity of which he does not seem to have 

 doubted, and the correctness of his views have been now well- 

 established by subsequent investigation. 



The next (1833-4) earliest systematic work of exploration we 

 find was carried out in the valley of the Meuse, Belgium, by the 

 late Dr. Schmerling, of Liege, who carefully searched for and 

 exhumed the fossil human and animal remains buried together in 

 the ossiferous caverns around Liege, an account of forty of which he 

 published, with figures and descriptions of their buried contents. 



In 1841 M. Boucher de Perthes commenced to collect, and, in 

 1847, to publish the result of his researches in the gravel-deposits of 

 the valley of the Somme, around Abbeville, and the sight of his col- 

 lection of flint-implements induced Dr. Eigollot to search the gravel- 

 pits around Amiens, which also yielded singular proofs of pre- 

 historic man. Notwithstanding the publication of these discoveries, 

 however, public interest was not as yet aroused, and the French savans 

 of Paris only laughed at Monsieur de Perthes and his researches. 



Meanwhile English geologists were accumulating facts and ma- 

 terial, which only needed some fresh motive force to give it vitality 

 and importance, and it came at last after long years of waiting. 



To the late Dr. Hugh Falconer, F.E.S., we no doubt owe the 

 initiation of a new era in the investigation of ossiferous deposits. 

 For, although Mr. Trimmer, Mr. Godwin-Austen, Mr. Prestwich, and 

 many other good geologists were at work long before this period, it 

 was the systematic exploration of the Brixham cave, near Torquay 

 (commenced in 1858), which first excited public attention to this 

 interesting branch of geological inquiry, and set in motion similar 

 explorations in France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Malta, and elsewhere. 



