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The evidence then clearly afforded by the Creswell Caves is, 
that Rhinoceros tichorinus , cave hysena, and bear lived on to 
a more recent date than the men who made the bone awls, bone 
needles, and the engraver who incised the horse’s head, for they 
are found above them, whilst the two species rhinoceros and 
hysena had not ceased to exist at the time when ornamental 
Samian pottery was either made in Derbyshire or imported 
from Samos. How then can the contemporaneity of man with 
the extinct mammalia prove man’s antiquity ? 
Let us now return to the Devonshire rhinoceros, which in 
Kent’s Cavern left a portion of his frame amongst the Roman 
and pre-Roman remains. 
I think we shall find that he did not so far outlive his congeners 
as to be a curiosity in his day, for not only his brother rhi- 
noceros but also the cave-bear, cave-hyaena, and the mammoth, 
not content with the period of the cave-earth and black band, 
they had splashed their way into the cavern, or had been dragged 
in by some of their companions after a foot or more of the upper 
stalagmite had been formed, for their remains were found nearly 
on the surface, covered only by an inch and a half of this stalag- 
mitic substance. Mr. Pengelly produces the case to prove the 
very slow formation of the stalagmite, but he must forgive me 
for drawing another lesson from the fact, and that is, the more 
recent existence of the mammals referred to. 
I will give the passage in Mr. Pengelly’s own words, as I 
shall have to refer to it again. Mr. Pengelly then says, in an 
address to the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of 
Science, July, 1874: — “I have found teeth of the cave-bear, 
cave-hyaena, the mammoth, and the tichorine rhinoceros so very 
little below the surface of the stalagmite in Kent’s Cavern that 
more than an inch and a half at most of calcareous matter had 
not accumulated there since they were lodged where they were 
met with, whilst below them was a floor of the same material a 
foot, and sometimes much more, in thickness ; and the situation 
was such as to place it beyond all doubt and question that they 
had not been dislodged from an older deposit and re-inhumed.”* 
This is a good case for our investigation. An inch and a half 
of stalagmite, we learn, divides the remains of four of the most 
important species of extinct mammalia from the astragalus of 
rhinoceros found in the black mould containing Roman and 
pre-Roman pottery. We have, then, but to learn how long that 
inch and half took to form to enable us to determine how far 
removed in time were these mammals from the Roman or 
pre-Roman period. We have not much data from which to 
* Notes on Paleontology of Devonshire, W. Pengelly, p. 21. 
