454 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Falconer and Mr. Everest, in tlie spring of 1858, in a cave at 
Brixliam, Devon. All possible precautions for a faithful regis- 
tration of discoveries were adopted, and it was soon announced 
that human industrial works had been discovered, mixed indis- 
criminately with bones of the rhinoceros, hyaena, and other 
extinct animals, in the undisturbed ochreous gravel and earth 
of the cave. Experienced geologists examined the cave and 
its whole products, and concluded without doubt that they had 
not been introduced by different natural agencies at wide 
intervals of time. The establishment of this fact is obviously 
of great importance in similar researches, for upon it nearly the 
entire value of cave evidences for human antiquity rests. 
The Brixham cave may be regarded as in itself a complete 
geological case in point, since no preventable chance of inac- 
curacy was left unprovided for, and every fact was corroborated 
by careful examination. It is true that no human bones were 
discovered in it, yet many humanly-worked flint knives were 
found, chiefly in the lowest part of the bone earth, and a very 
perfect one was disinterred at a depth of thirteen feet from 
the surface, covered with bone-earth of the same thickness. 
Fifteen other flint knives were extracted in another part, which 
was at the same level as, though not in connection with, re- 
mains of mammalia. In the bone-earth also of this level an 
entire left liind-leg of a cave-bear was exhumed, with every 
bone in its natural place. It must, therefore, have been in- 
troduced to the cave when clothed with flesh, or, at least, while 
the separate bones were bound together by then* natural liga- 
ments, and buried in that state in the mud. Other interesting- 
facts of a like chai’acter were noticed in the Brixham cave. 
Dr. Falconer’s researches in richly ossiferous caves in Sicily 
produced similar results, and it may be fully expected that 
other ossiferous caverns will, from time to time, add to the 
geological evidences of man’s contemporaneity with several 
extinct mammalia. Even while we write we learn that another 
ossiferous cavern of interest has just been discovered in the 
rock of Gibraltar. There a human skull was found embedded 
in bone-earth, in close contiguity with a stone implement ; and 
the bone of a large mammal twenty feet below the surface of 
a limestone plateau of very compact and solid rock. Seven- 
teen feet below the level two human jaws were found, and 
close by it two stone knives, together with an oblong slab of 
sandstone, having one surface much worn and polished as if 
by friction. Many other interesting relics of human presence 
have been dug out from the same cavern, with fragments of 
pottery and bits of charcoal ; all, however, tending to show 
that the men who once harboured in it were not of the most 
ancient races. 
