430 
found the passage was so low that it was extremely difficult 
with quarrymen's tools and good workmen to break the 
crust; and the supposition that it had been previously 
disturbed is impossible in an age when no metal appears to 
have been in use, and the spot was about 400 feet from the 
entrance.* 
Dr. Mantell, in his last work,| in speaking of the Megace- 
ros says, — Remains of this majestic animal have been found 
collocated with ancient sepulchral urns, stone implements, 
and rude single trunk canoes, in such manner as to leave 
no doubt that this now extinct species was coeval with the 
Aborigines of these Islands. 
Professor Anstead, in alluding to the occurrence of human 
remains with those of extinct animals, remarks, " It would 
certainly be unsafe to assent in the face of the evidence that 
exists, that man has not really been an inhabitant of the 
earth for a much longer time than historic records seem to 
show."t And in this opinion I perfectly coincide, for if we 
go no further than our own islands it does not appear that 
we have even positive testimony when and from whence 
Britain was first peopled, though there is every probability 
that it took place at a much earlier period than is generally 
supposed. For the learned Retzius has shown that the 
earliest inhabitants of Ireland, of whose skulls remains still 
exist, were identical in ethnological character with the Lapps 
of the present day. Now it is a remarkable coincidence that 
remains of the Rein-deer, as I have already stated, have also 
been found in Ireland, and that the human bodies which 
have been discovered in bogs were clothed in the precise 
clothing of the Lapps, also of the present day, — skins and 
coarse woollen garments. How these Northmen with their 
Rein-deer became located in such a distant spot I shall not 
* Report of the British Association, 1847, p. 73. 
f Petrifactions and their Teachings, p. 456. 
$ Elementary Course on Mineralogy and Geology, page 314. 
