232 
and on which I would make a few remarks. With regard to the Victoria 
Cave, the author very naturally assumes that the account of the exploration 
was the formal decision of the Committee, after weighing the evidence. It 
was, however, merely the private opinion of the Secretary, who, as a matter 
of fact, is solely responsible for the conduct of the exploration, and for the 
reports. My name, among others, was on the Committee, but since my 
retirement from the office of secretary, up to the last British Association 
Meeting at Dublin, I was unfortunately out of England when the reports were 
read. At that meeting I took the first opportunity open to me of expressing 
my non-acceptance of the Report, and of the evidence as to man in that cavern. 
The Report was not approved by the section, and the British Association grant 
was no longer made. The supposed human fibula found when I conducted the 
exploration was so equivocal that I put it aside without any remark. Sub- 
sequently, however, on the authority of one of the best osteologists in Europe, 
I accepted it as human ; but ultimately, on fresh evidence which I imme- 
diately brought before the Geological Society and the Anthropological Institute, 
I held it to be ursine. The cut bones of the goat, and the small fragments 
of bone and teeth either of sheep or goat, which have been assumed to belong 
to the lower strata in the cavern, are obviously recent, and have dropped from 
very remote period which the locality indicates. The remains of extinct 
mammals also here appear. At the Trou de la Naulette human osseous 
remains have been discovered below its second stalagmite floor. 
“ These, then, are the conditions to be accepted if fair inferences have 
been drawn from the facts apparent. At some very remote distance of time, 
beyond all bounds of history or tradition, the lion, the tiger, and the elephant, 
have roamed about in Britain, possessing there a tropical climate as necessary 
for them ; at a still more remote period this region has been covered with a 
coating of, say, 3,000 feet of ice, placing it within arctic limits ; and still 
further back, at some inconceivable distance of time, the human race have 
been found, by the traces left, to have had existence on the earth. — I am, Sir, 
yours truly, T. L. Strange.” 
[The foregoing, not having been read at the meeting, is inserted as a note. 
Many of the points alluded to herein were taken up in the discussion. It 
would require much time to consider the whole of the questions raised, 
upon some of which leading scientific men are still at issue ; in regard to 
these we shall do well to follow the suggestion in the last paragraph of 
Mr. Mello’s remarks (p. 237). The following are Mr. Callard’s comments : — 
Mr. Strange, in his letter, raises a very interesting question of the possi- 
bility or otherwise of a change in the polar axis being the cause of great 
climatic changes. To this question, 'as Mr. Strange observes, I have given 
no attention in my paper, and for this reason, that the woolly mammoth, 
which we relegate to the cold regions, is not divided by any geological 
stratum from the hyama, which is supposed to belong to a warm climate, 
but they are found side by side in the same stratum of cave-earth, and in the 
same foot of stalagmite, in which case there could have been no change of 
climate between the existence of the one and the other of these mammalia 
to have arrested the flow of stalactite by the frost, and again to have 
released it by a thaw, — and no evidence of the immense periods that would 
be required for the astronomical changes supposed. It is a very common 
assumption, but I believe an erroneous one, — that the present habitat of an 
animal is its necessary habitat, — T. K. C.] 
