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the upper stratum of Romano-British age, in which they are very numerous. 
Unfortunately this faulty evidence has been taken by eager scientific imagina- 
tions to stamp the Preglacial age of man, and it presents a fair mark for 
criticism, such as that of Mr. Callard. It has, however, no more weight on 
the general question of man in caves, than the evidence of a witness would 
have in a court of law about things which he never saw or never heard of. 
It is simply out of court. 
“ The discoveries in caverns, from the Pyrenees as far to the north as Derby- 
shire, and as far to the east as the Danube, prove beyond reasonable doubt, 
that man lived in Europe at the same time as extinct animals such as the 
cave-bear and the woolly rhinoceros ; and works of art, of the same kind as 
the sketch of the horse in the Robin Hood Cave at Cresswell, have been met 
with in Belgium, France, and Switzerland, under conditions which prove that 
the Palaeolithic hunter delineated on bones and antlers, with remarkable 
fidelity, the animals which he hunted. With regard to the hog-mane in the 
sketch of the horse, supposed by Mr. Callard to have been cut, it does not 
seem to me to show any sign of cutting. Were it cut it would imply that 
the horse was domestic. No domestic animals have yet been found in any 
of the undisturbed older deposits in caverns. 
“ When the author concludes that the hyaena and woolly rhinoceros were 
living in Britain as late as the Roman times, because they were found in 
the Cresswell Caves in which Roman pottery and other remains were also 
found, he ignores that the articles of Roman age Avere always met with 
either in the surface soil above the stalagmite, overlying the older deposit 
with those animals, or in places A\ T hich had been disturbed by digging, and 
by the burrows of rabbits and foxes. 
“Other and minor points relating to other caves raised in the paper may 
safely be left to the consideration of those more particularly interested in 
them. It merely remains for me to repeat, that in dealing with the question 
of the antiquity of man, it seems idle to attempt to build up a chronology 
in terms of years, beyond the written record. Out of the reach of history 
there are no natural chronometers. The rate of the erosion of a valley, of 
the deposition of silt in the bottom of it, or of the accumulation of 
stalagmite in a cave, are equally uncertain, since they depend upon variable 
and intermittent causes. The rainfall may vary, or the silt-laden waters of 
the stream take a different direction, or the Aoav of water containing 
carbonate of lime may cease. They are, therefore, blind guides to the lapse 
of time. The antiquity of man is to be measured, not by years, but by the 
series of events Avhich have taken place since he hunted the mammoth and 
woolly rhinoceros, reindeer and horse, and fought with cave-bears and lions 
in France and Britain, in the Pleistocene period. Measured by the 
geographical and biological changes which have taken place since that time, 
it seems to me so vast, that all the events recorded in history, — Egyptian, 
Assyrian, Greek, Roman, — are in comparison things of yesterday. 
“ Yours truly, “ W. Boyd Dawkins. 
“ Captain F. Petrie, Hon. Sec." 
