1893 - 94 .] Dr Munro on Rise and Progress of Anthropology. 2B5 
when our barbaric predecessors sometimes polished their stone 
implements, but were still unacquainted with the use of metallic 
tools ; when to the Historic, Bronze, and Neolithic Ages we men- 
tally add that long series of years which must have been required 
for the old fauna, with the mammoth and rhinoceros, and other, to 
us, strange and unaccustomed forms, to be supplanted by a group 
of animals more closely resembling those of the present day ; and 
when, remembering all this, we realise the fact that all these vast 
periods of years have intervened since the completion of the exca- 
vation of the valley and the close of the Palaeolithic Period, the 
mind is almost lost in amazement at the vista of antiquity dis- 
played .” — {Ancient Stone Implements, &c., p. 622.) 
As already mentioned, the contents of caves sometimes afford 
the means of estimating the relative sequence of events during 
Quaternary and recent times. As an illustration, we may again 
refer to the singularly suggestive phenomena disclosed by the now 
completed excavation of Kent’s Cavern. No investigation has 
ever been conducted under more qualified auspices, nor with 
greater care, than the excavation of this cave ; and consequently 
the results are correspondingly valuable. Briefly stated, the fol- 
lowing deposits were uniformly met with from above downwards : — 
(1) Black mould, 3 to 12 inches thick. 
(2) A layer of granular stalagmite, 1 to 3 feet thick. 
(3) Cave earth, of variable depth. 
Upon examining these three deposits, it was found that the 
upper contained relics of modern Man associated with a fauna 
essentially the same as that of the present day, and representing a 
period of at least 2000 years. The bed of stalagmite, which con- 
tained few relics of any kind, formed a complete partition between 
the two deposits above and below it, and virtually separated the 
remains of two totally distinct civilisations. The contents of the 
cave-earth below it included implements and tools of flint and bone, 
shells of pectens, ashes, and charcoal, together with the broken 
bones of a variety of animals. But not only were these worked 
objects of palaeolithic types, but the bones represented, for the 
most part, an altogether different fauna. Not a bone of the ox, 
sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c., animals exclusively encountered in the 
