526 Proceedings of the Roijal Society 
inhabited, at Wick, and within which Dr Mitchell has seen living 
a family of eight or ten. But cave men are common elsewhere. 
Mr Barnwell has lately recorded the curious fact, that in the 
neighbourhood of Charters there are at present living, in caves, 
150,000 men, in the very centre of France. In Africa, Asia, &c., 
caves are still inhabited, as they were by the Troglodites and 
Horites of old. 
In England, we know that in archaic times caves were inhabited 
by the men of those distant ages, such as Kent’s Hole, the Brixham 
Cave, the Kirkdale caves, &c. In these caves the bones of man 
have been found with his stone weapons, and along with them the 
bones of long extinct animals, as the mammoth, the cave bear, the 
hymn a, &c. But in his earliest and rudest times, man has been a 
sculpturing and painting animal; and his old attempts in this way 
may yet be found upon the walls of those ossiferous English caves. 
Sir Charles Nicolson had stated to Dr Simpson, as a proof that man, 
in his savage state, was a sculpturing being, the curious fact, that 
at the head of Sydney harbour rude sculpturings of the kangaroo, 
&c., had been found cut on the rocks, when the turf was removed 
in building operations there. Mr Graham had likewise informed 
him that at the Cape, the Bushmen, one of the rudest existing races 
of humanity, live much in caves, and constantly paint on the walls 
of them the animals in their neighbourhood, and sometimes battle 
and hunting scenes, always in profile. Mens. Lartet has lately 
shown that the caves of Perigord have been inhabited by archaic 
man, at a time when apparently he had no metallic weapons, 
when the reindeer still inhabited the south of France, and when 
even the dog was not yet a domestic animal. Yet amongst the 
relics found in these Perigord caves have been discovered sculptur- 
ings upon stone, bone, and ivory, of different animals ; and latterly 
a rude sketch of the mammoth itself. All this entitles us to hope 
that, if these cave researches are prosecuted, we may yet find on 
the cave walls sculpturings done by man in the most ancient times, 
and containing fragments of his earliest history. 
[Dr Simpson’s communication was illustrated by numerous draw- 
ings of the Fife cave sculptures, made by Mr Drummond, E.S.A., 
and Dr Paterson of Leith.] 
