CAYES AND THEIR OCCUPANTS. 
373 
which belong to Prehistoric times. The style of art displayed 
in these latter is of a very distinct type, which in its ruder 
forms of weapons shades off, as it were, into the still earlier 
Neolithic period. 
But few remains of the Bronze age have been met with in 
British caves. The Neolithic period is more fully represented 
both here and abroad. The occupation of caves by the Neolithic 
men was general throughout Europe. Almost everywhere traces 
of these people have been met with who used the caves both as 
dwellings and as tombs. Not only are these men distinguished 
from the races which succeeded them by their physical con- 
formation, but also by the character of their implements. 
These were made either of stone or bone ; their stone imple- 
ments being characterized by an amount of finish which is 
never found in those of the yet earlier men of the Pleistocene 
period. Their spear- and arrow-heads are elaborately con- 
structed, and a large number of their tools and weapons are 
polished, so that the age in which they lived is sometimes 
called on this account the 44 polished stone age.” Magnificent 
specimens of their implements have been found in Denmark, 
which for perfection of form and careful finish are unrivalled. 
Traces of Neolithic man have been found in the Victoria Cave 
and in caves in W ales ; also in the celebrated cavern called 
Kent’s Hole, in Devonshire, and in caves in Belgium, France, 
and elsewhere ; besides others met with in lake-dwellings in 
Switzerland and in Ireland. Professor Dawkins has pointed 
out that these 44 Prehistoric peoples lived under physical con- 
ditions very different from those of Central and Western 
Europe at the present time, the surface of the country being 
covered with rock, forests, and morass, which afforded shelter 
to the elk, bison, urus, stag, megaceros , and wild boar, as well 
as to innumerable wolves. They arrived from the east with 
cereals and domestic animals, some of which, as the 6 Bos 
longifronsj and 4 Sus palustris ,’ reverted to their original wild 
state. From the very exigencies of their position they lived 
partly by hunting, and they gradually pushed their way west- 
ward, carrying with them the rudiments of that civilization 
which we ourselves possess,” and 44 the climate which they en- 
joyed was sufficiently severe to allow the reindeer to inhabit 
the district on which now stands the city of London. . . . The 
area of Grreat Britain was greater than now, since a plain ex- 
tended seawards from the coastline nearly everywhere, sup- 
porting a dense forest of Scotch fir, oak, beech, and alder, the 
relics of which are to be seen in the beds of peat and the stumps 
of the trees near low-water mark on most of our shores.” — 
( 44 Cave Hunting.”) 
A period of unknown length, but which must have been very 
