EEPOET ON THE EXPLOITATION OF BEIXHAM CAVE. 
565 
on a given zone, — that zone being generally above the deposit of cave-earth covering up 
the remains of animals which may previously have frequented the cave. 
In the instance, however, of the Brixham Cave, although we have in evidence these 
primitive works of man, they are so few and so scattered, and they occur also on levels 
so widely different (no two, in fact, of the fifteen flint implements found there having been 
met with on the same level), that it is not possible to conceive that man inhabited the 
cave at any time. The specimens are not numerous enough : they are found isolated 
and without any corroborative adjuncts. 
Nor do we think that the flints could have been brought in by wild beasts with human 
prey, for not a fragment of a human bone was found in the cave; whereas, like with the 
animals serving as prey, some of the remains of man in the shape of gnawed bones or 
teeth must, in that case, have escaped destruction. Could the worked flints have been 
washed in, as the unworked flints doubtlessly were, with the shingle of the fourth bed 
or with the silt of the third bed 1 This is possible ; still we are not disposed to adopt 
that view, inasmuch as although some of the specimens show marks of wear, that wear 
arises rather from use, and none exhibit the general wear and rounding produced by 
running water ; the wear is, in fact, often so slight, that in the instance of the remark- 
able flint implement which was found broken in two pieces (p. 550), and each piece in 
a different gallery, the broken edges (ff) when brought together fitted as closely as 
two pieces of freshly broken porcelain. One fragment (No. 6) was found in the Flint- 
knife Gallery on the line of main water passage and the other (No. 8) in a different 
direction in the Pen Gallery, so that their position was in all probability determined by 
artificial agency. The worked flints also in the cave-earth are to those in the shingle 
in the proportion of nearly 3 to 1 ; whereas with the un worked flints, on the contrary, 
the proportions are more than reversed, there being only 2 in the cave-earth to 5 in the 
shingle bed, where the stream was the natural means of their introduction. The flints 
in the cave-earth in No. 3 bed are in the inverse ratio in which as extraneous bodies 
they should occur had natural agencies only been in operation. 
After full consideration of the subject, we can only conclude that the worked flints 
were lost or left behind by man during occasional visits to the cave, either for the sake 
of temporary refuge or in following prey which may have sought shelter there. The 
former alternative is the more likely, as during the formation of the shingle, in which 
the four specimens were found, the cave was but little frequented by animals, only 7 bones 
occurring in that bed ; whilst in the cave-earth, though 751 bones were found, not more 
than eleven worked flints were met with. The proportion of bones to flints shows 
therefore no relation one to the other, whether it be considered that man was subject 
to be the occasional prey of carnivorous animals, or whether man sought his prey 
amongst the herds of wild deer, oxen, and some other animals. On the other hand, the 
absence of human bones would seem to indicate that early man had the skill and activity 
necessary to avoid falling a prey to the powerful wild animals of the period, while at 
the same time his senses, like those of animals, must have been as acute and keen 
