55 
" century, and which cast a still murkier shadow upon the 
" dawning of the fifth, very questionable ?" 
Dr. Whitaker says, " several of the caves appear to have 
" been the haunts of ancient banditti, or perhaps the retreats 
" of the first inhabitants." 
Amongst the articles to which I have alluded, found in the 
caves, some appertain to the personal ornaments and implements 
of uncivilized nations, as the tooth and shell necklace, bone 
fish-hook, and adze heads of stone ; while others shew a great 
advance in the arts of civilized life, as the bronze and silver 
fibulae of elegant form and ornamentation, rings, castings in 
bronze, coins, &c, which either imply that they have been 
inhabited by two different races of people, or that they were 
in a state of transition, as we might expect the Romanized 
Britons woidd be ; and who would, in that case, naturally 
have retained some of their primaeval and rude productions ; 
in either case it is a point of considerable importance to bear 
in mind. 
Mr. Roach Smith, I believe, endeavours to account for the 
articles of human construction deposited in these caves by sup- 
posing the latter to have been used as places of sepulture by the 
Romanized Britons, and that the charcoal ashes may have been 
derived from the fires used for the cremation of the dead 
bodies, whose ashes were subsequently placed in the urns, 
together with the coins and other articles belonging to the 
deceased. Had this been the case, however, surely some of 
the earthen vessels would have been found entire by the first 
explorers, which has not been the case ; but, on the contrary, 
they were invariably in fragments, and with the various other 
articles scattered indiscrim in ately over the floor, and in the 
most unlikely places, just as they had been left by their 
owners, and as would be the case now by any people living 
for a length of time in a cave, leaving behind them the 
broken earthenware vessels and articles of domestic use 
