226 
France, Reliquiae Aquitanica, held that man was not coeval with those 
animals which were now more generally known to us by their fossils ; as to the 
rate at which stalagmite was formed, Mr. Evans, President of the Geological 
Society, had stated that “ the rate of deposit of stalagmitic matter varies 
so much with different conditions, that its thickness affords no true criterion 
of the length of time during which it has accumulated.”* In Kent’s Cavern 
the rate of the deposit of stony carbonate of lime— in other words, stalag- 
mitic matter— had been very slow of late ; but this was under present con- 
ditions ; under others it might have been very rapid. For instance ; m the 
Carrara district, in Italy, the stalagmitic deposits were made a source of 
livelihood among the inhabitants, for the water was in many places so im- 
pregnated that any object upon which it fell became thickly coated in a fort- 
night, and the inhabitants formed brooches and other ornaments in this way. 
Mr. Whitley said his paper only dealt with the things found in the 
Brixham Cavern, and not with what had been found in other caves. As to 
the rate at which stalagmitic matter was deposited, it varied so greatly, that 
in culverts which he had made he had seen stalagmite formed an inch m 
thickness and stalactites six inches in length. 
Mr. T. K. Callard said that even if it were proved that the flints were 
the work of man, that would not be any proof of man’s great antiquity. 
The resemblance between the flints broken by man and those which were 
fractured without man’s interference, arose from the natural fracture of t e 
flint which made it break in a particular way. As to the so-called paleo- 
lithic arrow and spear-heads, there was no evidence to show that they had 
ever been attached to shafts for offensive purposes, and without 
that evidence no tenable theory could be deduced from them. If he 
found a basket full of carpenters’ tools in a cave, it would prove 
nothing as to the antiquity of man. With regard to the inscription ‘ .1688. 
in Kent’s Cave,t very much depended on the position of that inscription ; it 
* Ancient Stone Implements, p. 432. ■ _ , ,, „ o nA 
+ Dr. J. W. Dawson, F.K.S., in his Story of the Earth and Man, p. 304, 
says, in regard to Kent's cave The somewhat extensive and ramifying 
cavern of Kent’s Hole is an irregular excavation, evidently due partly to .the 
fissures in limestone rock, and partly to the erosive action of water end- 
ing such fissures into chambers and galleries. At what tune it was 
originally cut we do not know, but it must have existed as a cavern at the 
dole of the Pliocene or beginning of the Post-pliocene period, sin^ wluch 
time it has been receiving a series of deposits which have quite filled up 
some of its smaller branches. , . . , 
“ First and lowest, according to Mr. Pengelly, is a breccia, or ”® o 
broken and rounded stones, with hardened red clay filling the ln ‘“® tl “ es ; M ,°*‘ 
of the stones are of the rock which forms the roof and walls of the cave, but 
many, especially the rounded ones, are from more distant parts of the sur- 
“unding P country. In this mass, the depth of which is unknown are 
numerous bones, all of one kind of animal, the cave bear, a raeataM i whic 
seems to have lived in Western Europe from the close of the Pk» c ™e down 
to the modern period. It must have been one of the earliest and most 
