164 
at least 100 feet less deep than they are at present.” 
These were the results of a systematic and careful examina- 
tion of a virgin cave by a committee of scientific men, and 
they gave a stimulus to research which without abatement 
has lasted to the present time. The subsequent exploration 
of Kent’s Cavern, Torquay, has even more imperishably asso- 
ciated the caves of South Devon with the new science. 
This science is indeed the growth as of yesterday, though 
the discoveries on which it rests had been in some measure 
anticipated.* In 1833, the late Dr. Schmerling, of Liege, 
published the results of his labours in the numerous caverns in 
the basin of the Meuse, giving full proof of the co-existence of 
extinct animals with man. 
About the same time f Mr. McEnery, “ for many years 
chaplain at Tor Abbey, had found in a cave one mile east of 
Torquay, in red loam covered with stalagmite, not only bones 
of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear, and other 
mammalia, but several remarkable flint tools, some of which 
he supposed to be of great antiquity and which are now known 
to be of a distinctly Palaeolithic type, while there were also 
remains of man in the same cave, of later date.” 
These views of MacEnery, the result of five years’ explora- 
tion, were withheld from publication, out of deference to 
Dr. Buckland, who, in his celebrated work entitled Reliquia; 
Diluviance, published in 1823, declared that none of the 
human bones or stone implements met with by him in any 
of the caverns could be considered to be as old as the mam- 
moth and other extinct quadrupeds. 
About ten years afterwards Mr. Godwin Austen declared 
that he had obtained in the above cavern works of man 
from undisturbed loam or clay under stalagmite, mingled 
with the remains of extinct animals, and that all these must 
have been introduced before the stalagmite flooring had been 
formed. J 
Then followed, in 1858, the exploration of the Brixham 
Cavern by Dr. Falconer and others, which produced a 
revolution in public opinion ; but Kent’s Cave remained 
undisturbed from 1846 to 1864. 
* In 1824 Cuvier exhibited his usual large-minded caution when asked 
whether human bones had yet been discovered and proved to be coeval with 
those of extinct mammalia. “ Pas encore ” was his simple reply. — Nott and 
Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 341. 
t Antiquity of Man, Lyell, 4th ed. pp. 9!) to 108. Trans. Devon Assoc., 
vol. iii. p. 321. 
% Palceontological Moms., vol. ii. p. 591. 
