CAVERNS AND THEIR CONTENTS. 
459 
latest part of their history ; and the balance of evidence ren- 
ders it probable that the human race in a veiy early stage of 
development has been much longer upon the earth than is 
generally supposed. How long that stage of non- development, 
or imperfect development, may have existed, there are, as yet, 
no means of determining. 
What a singular history, then, do these caverns afford, and 
how important is then’ geological bearing ! One can imagine 
no good reason why those which were once inhabited should be 
limited in date to a period so recent as to include among 1 their 
inhabitants the contemporaries of man ; and yet, although they 
exist, and are even abundant, in the older limestones,* no 
trace has ever yet been found in them of the inhabitants of the 
land during any more ancient part of the earth's history. In 
the rocks themselves there are proofs enough of near land; 
quadrupeds, birds, and land shells, besides numerous fragments 
of land vegetation, are found there ; and the land must have 
been not only near, but tolerably extensive. Why, then, is it 
that no fragments of the gigantic saurian or the marsupial rats 
of the middle period are met with among the mud at the bottom 
of the caverns ? 
To questions like these but little answer can be given. It may 
be that such vestiges really exist, but remain as yet undiscovered. 
It may be that the entrances to the caverns were not conve- 
niently placed with reference to the general level of the land 
and water at the time. When the entrance to a cavern is 
below the water, or high up on the steep face of a cliff, whether 
above the level of the sea or a river, it is clear that there will be 
few remains of the life of the period preserved within its shelter. 
And coming nearer to our own time, the question will also be 
asked, — What manner of men were these ancestors of ours — 
these indigens who inhabited the holes in the rocks, or who 
made use of them for storing their implements or burying their 
dead ? Here, again, the answer is little satisfactory, but the 
facts are eminently suggestive. 
Concerning the various weapons, or tools, or whatever else 
the human remains buried with hyaenas' and bears' bones may 
have been, one fact is very significant, namely, that in all parts 
of the world — in England and France, Germany and Italy, 
Russia and Scandinavia, everywhere, in a word, throughout 
Europe — these remains, wherever found, are in all essentials 
the same, and are not unfrequently of foreign material. This, 
of itself, is interesting ; but when we find that from the interior 
* The limestones of the carboniferous period contain by far the most 
remarkable of the caverns in England and Wales and North America. The 
oolitic limestones are chiefly caverniferous in Germany, and tertiary lime- 
stones in Sicily. 
