217 
that my diagnosis of the Victoria Cave bone was in all probability 
erroneous.”* 
The Committee with equal candour gave publicity to their 
decision that any argument based upon the bone’s supposed 
character must be unreservedly given up. 
I hold in my hand a human fibula, and have coloured that 
portion which corresponds to the fragment which has given rise 
to so much discussion. It is but six inches in length and with- 
out any articulation. 
And here is another human fibula marked in a similar way. 
This one belonged to a man of large stature. You will observe 
how different the two are in form. Such a fragment of a bone 
so variable will leave it less a wonder that a mistake should 
have been made, than that there should have been the venture 
to determine a species from such a fragment. 
We are left, then, where we were before, to argue the contem- 
poraneity of man with the extinct mammalia from his handi- 
work, and not from the presence of any portion of his frame. 
But the next and latest case of cavern exploration introduces 
a new feature into the argument. 
On the estate of the Duke of Portland, at the north-east of 
Derbyshire, there isabeautiful dale known as Creswell Crags, where 
the shadows of the adjacent rocks, with their rich foliage, are re- 
flected in the clear waters of an artificial lake that separates certain 
natural caverns in the limestone. Three of these caverns have 
lately been explored by the Eev. J. M. Mello, F.Gr.S., — the Pin- 
hole and Kobin Hood’s Cave on the left side of the lake, and 
Church Hole on the right. 
Within these caverns and on the surface were found orna- 
ments of the same age and character as those in the Victoria 
Cavern, and on digging beneath the surface into the cave-earth 
Mr. Mello met with the bones of lion, bison, hyaena, tooth of 
machairodus, and also with the presence of woolly rhinoceros 
and mammoth ; and associated with these remains were two or 
three fine bone implements, a perfect bone needle, some awls, a 
kind of gouge, f and an oval ironstone implement ; and lastly, 
to the great joy of the finder, he extracted from this cave-earth, 
in the presence of Prof. Dawkins and Mr. Tiddeman, a bone 
which had scratched upon it the outline of a horse’s head. 
We have now, then, got overwhelming evidence of man’s 
existence in Derbyshire at the same time as the woolly rhinoceros 
and mammoth. But now comes the question, what order of 
man ? To what period did he belong ? Most assuredly it was 
* Daily Express, Dublin, August 17, 1878. 
t Quarterly Journal Geological Society, vol. xxiii. p. 586. 
