422 Reports and Proceedings — British Association — 
There seems to be neither record nor tradition of the discovery of the 
Cavern. Richardsou, in the 8th edition of ‘ A Tour through the Islaud 
of Great Britain,’ published iu 1778, speaks of it as “ perhaps the greatest 
natural curiosity ” iu the county ; its name occurs on a map dated 1769 ; 
it is mentioned in a lease dated 1659 ; visitors cut their names and dates 
on the Stalagmite from 1571 down to the present Century ; judging from 
numerous objects found on the floor, it was visited by man through 
mediseval back to pre-Roman times ; and, unless the facts exhumed by 
explorers have been misinterpreted, it was a human home during the era 
of the Mammoth and his contemporaries. 
In 1824, Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, was led to make a few 
diggiugs iu the Cavern, and was the first to find fossil bones there. He 
was soon followed by Mr. (now Sir) W. C. Trevelyan, who not only found 
bones, but liad a plate of them engraved. In 1825, the Rev. J. MacEnery, 
an Irish Roman Catholic priest residing in the family of Mr. Cary, of Tor 
Abbey, Torquay, first visited the Cavern, when he, too, found teeth and 
bones, of which he published a plate. Soon after, he made another visit, 
aecompanied by Dr. Buckland, when he had the good fortune to discover 
a flint implement ; the first instauce, he teils us, of such a relic being 
noticecl in any cavern (see Trans. Devon Assoc. iii. p. 441). Before the close 
of 1825, he commenced a series of more or less systematic diggiugs, and 
continued them uutil, aud perhaps after, the summer of 1829 (ibid. p. 
295). Preparations appear to have been made to publish the results of 
his labours ; a prospectus was issued, numerous plates were lithographed, 
it was generally believed that the MS. was almost ready, and the only 
thing needed was a list of subscribers sufficientto justify publication, when, 
alas ! on the 18th February, 1841, before the printer had received any 
“ copy,” before even the world of Science had accepted his anthropological 
discoveries, before the value of his labours were known to more than a very 
few, Mr. MacEnery died at Torquay. 
After his decease his MS. could not be discovered, and its loss was duly 
deplored. Nevertheless, it was found after several years, and, having 
undergone varieties of fortune, became the property of Mr. Vivian, of 
Torquay, who. having published portions of it in 1859, presented it in 
1867 to the Torquay Natural History Society, whose property it still 
remains. In 1869, I liad the pleasure of priuting the whole, in the ‘Trans- 
actions of the Devonshire Association.’ 
Whilst Mr. MacEnery was conducting his researches, a few independent 
diggings, on a less extensive scale, were undertaken by otlier gentlemen. 
The principal of these was Mr. Godwin- Austen, the well-known geologist, 
whose papers fully bore out all that MacEnery had stated (see Trans. 
Geol. Soc. Lond. 2nd series, vi. p. 446). In 1846, a sub-committee of the 
Torquay Natural History Society undertook the careful exploration of 
very small pa/rts of the Cavern, and their Report was entirely confirmatory 
of the statements of their predecessors — that undoubted flint implements 
did occur, mixed with the remains of extinct mammals, in the cave-earth, 
beneath a thick floor of Stalagmite. The sceptical position of the 
authorities in geological Science remained unaflected, however, uutil 1858, 
when the discovery and systematic exploration of a comparatively small 
virgin cavern on Windmill Hill, at Brixham, led to a sudden and complete 
revolution ; for it was seen that whatever were the facts elsewhere, there 
had undoubtedly been found at Brixham flint implements commiugled 
with the remains of the Mammoth and his companions, and in such a way 
as to render it impossible to doubt that Man occupied Devonshire before 
the extinction of the cave mammals. 
Under the feeling that the statements made by MacEnery and his 
followers respecting Kent’s Hole were perhaps, after all, to be accepted as 
