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scattered through the soil from Berry Head to Windmill Hill, 
and may be traced down the slopes of the hill to the valley 
below. 
That these nodules of iron ore in the Cavern are thus a 
measure of the age of its deposits, and, by further inference, of 
the great antiquity of man, is opposed to all the surrounding 
geological evidence. 
I have now shown that this Cavern is a natural fracture, 
unaltered and unused by man ; that the celebrated “ flint 
knives” are only ordinary subsoil flakes and splinters of flint, 
of the most fragmentary and imperfect character ; and that 
similar shattered flints are found in the neighbouring soil ; that 
the traces of human workmanship said to be impressed on the 
flints are altogether of a different character from that on the 
known flint tools of the Neolithic age; and that the argument 
in support of the antiquity of man, based on the presence of the 
iron nodules in the cave, is completely disproved by a more 
extended geological survey of the surface formations. 
I have thus put facts against fancies— geological evidence 
against antiquarian assumptions; and I am justified in con- 
cluding that this Cavern furnishes no satisfactory evidence of 
the existence of Palaeolithic man— no chronological scale by 
which to estimate the date of his early appearance. 
Apocryphal Relics of Man, said to have been found in the 
Brixham Cavern. 
In his Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, at page 100, 
Sir Charles Lyell mentions the finding, deep in the bone-earth, of “ one of 
those siliceous nuclei, or cores, from which flint flakes had been struck off 
on every side 55 ; leading to the inference that flint knives had been made in 
the Cavern. But, strangely, this important flint is in no way mentioned in 
the Report of the Committee. From the table, at page 494 of the Report, 
it does not appear to be one of the four missing flints. It is, therefore, very 
probable that this core forms one of the parts of the spear-shaped “ imple- 
ment ” figured at page 550 ; and which is further perfected in form in the 
drawing by an imaginary line restoring about a fourth part of the butt end, 
assumed to be lost.° If this be so, the piece of flint which has done duty as 
a rejected “core” the past fifteen years, is now elevated to the honour of 
being the chief part of a spear-head of the “ Amiens type.” 
“ The portion of a cylindrical pin, or rod of ivory,” is a very apocryphal 
relic ; it is first mentioned by Mr. Evans in his Stone Implements, page 
471, without any indication as to the bed in which it was found ; it is 
referred to in the Report only in a parenthesis in the same loose manner ; 
and is dismissed by the reporter, Mr. Prestwich, with the suggestive 
remark, “ The position of this is not certain ” (p. 564). 
The “ remarkably symmetrical scraper,” figured by Mr. Evans in Stone 
Implements (fig. 412), as being found in the Cavern, “has since been found 
to be a surface specimen placed amongst the others by mistake. ’ (The 
Report, p. 551.) 
