228 
be accepted as proving a great antiquity, unless archaeologists could say 
when those mammalia became extinct. The dodo was now extinct, bu 
if be found one beside the skeleton of a man, it might only prove that the 
dodo was contemporaneous with modern times. 
Professor Tennant^Iso bore testimony to the great rapidity with which 
stalagmitic matter was deposited under certain conditions. In the cave at 
Matlock birds’ nests and chancellors’ wigs were petrified by being put m o 
the water, and ten wigs, which had belonged to Lord Eldon, were petnfie 
in a couple of years. (Laughter.) In many districts m England and 
especially in the north, spouts carrying water from mines were cho e 
up in two or three years. In the British Museum there was a table, pre- 
sented by the Duke of Rutland, made from the four sides of a spout. e 
aperture of the spout was originally one foot square, but it was reduced to 
four inches by five years’ deposits. . 
Mr. Tyler thought the evidence shown by the existence of the sculpture 
tusks and bones of mammoths was very strongly in favour of the great 
antiquity of man, but, of course, its value must depend on the age m which 
the old British times before the Roman invasion up to the P°rter-bottles ^ 
dropped halfpence of modern visitors. Lastly, m and upon the black mould 
ire manv fallen blocks from the roof of the' cave. . 
“ There can be no doubt that this cave and the neighbouring one of Brix- 
ham have done very much to impress the minds of British geologists with 
ideas of the great antiquity of man, and they have, more than other post- 
glacial monuments, shown the persistence of some animals, now e^mct up 
to the human age. Of precise data for determining time, they have, how- 
ever, given nothing. The only measures which seem to have been a PP h ^ 
namely the rate of growth of stalagmite and the. rate of erosion of the 
neighbouring valleys, are, from the very sequence of the deposits, obvious y 
worthless ; the only apparently available constant measure, namely, the 
of blocks from the roof, seems not yet to have been applied. . We are 'there 
fore quite uncertain as to the number of centuries involved in the ^ 111 - , 
this cave, and must remain so until a surer system of calculation is adopted. 
We may, however, attempt to sketch the series of events which it indicates. 
“The animals found in Kent’s Hole are all ‘ Post-glacial. They tliere 
inhabited the country after it rose from the great Glacial, submergence. 
Perhaps the first colonists of the coasts of Devonshire m this perio v 
the cave bears, migrating on floating ice, and subsisting, like the Arctic bea, 
and the black bears of Anticosti, on fish, and on the garbage cast up by the 
sea They found Kent’s Hole a sea-side cavern, with perhaps some ot its 
galieries still full of water, and filling with breccia, with which the bones 
of dead bears became mixed. As the land rose, these creatures for the most 
part betook themselves to lower levels, and in process of time the cavern 
stood upon a hill-side, perhaps several hundreds of feet above the sea , and 
the mountain torrents, their beds not yet emptied of glacial detritus, washed 
into it stones and mud and carcases of animals of many species which a 
now swarmed across the planes elevated out of the sea, and multiplied 
the land. This was the time of the cave-earth ; and bexore its deposit was 
completed, though how long before, a confused and ofte ^‘ dl , st , ur ^ d .fV* 
this P kind cannot tell, man himself seems to have been added to the inhabi- 
tants of the British land,” &c. 
