CAVES AT ENGIHOUL AND BRIXHAM. 157 
by rain. The rain-water, thns impregnated, permeates the 
porous limestone, dissolves a portion of it, and afterwards, 
when the excess of carbonic acid evaporates in the caverns, 
parts with the calcareous matter, and forms stalactite. Even 
while caverns are still liable to be occasionally flooded such 
calcareous incrustations accumulate, but it is generally when 
they are no longer in the line of drainage that a solid floor 
of hard stalagmite is formed on the bottom. 
The late Dr. Schmerling examined forty caves near Li%e, 
and found in all of them the remains of the same fauna, com¬ 
prising the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave- 
hyaena, cave-lion, and many others, some of extinct and some 
of living species, and in all of them flint implements. In four 
or five caves only parts of human skeletons were met with, 
comprising sometimes skulls with a few other bones, some¬ 
times nearly every part of the skeleton except the skull. In 
one of the caves, that of Engihoul, where Schmerling had 
found the remains of at least three human individuals, they 
were mingled in such a manner with bones of extinct mam¬ 
malia, as to leave no doubt on his mind (in 1833) of man 
having co-existed with them. 
In 1860, Professor Malaise, of Liege, explored with me this 
same cave of Engihoul, and beneath a hard floor of stalag¬ 
mite we found mud full of the bones of extinct and recent 
animals, such as Schmerling had described, and my compan¬ 
ion, persevering in his researches after I had returned to 
England, extracted from the same deposit two human lower 
jaw-bones retaining their teeth. The skulls from these Bel¬ 
gian caverns display no marked deviation from the normal 
European type of the present day. 
The careful investigations carried on by Dr. Falconer, Mr. 
Pengelly, and others, in the Brixham cave near Torquay, in 
1858, demonstrated that flint knives were there imbedded in 
such a manner in loam underlying a floor of stalagmite as to 
prove that man had been an inhabitant of that region when 
the cave-bear and other members of the ancient post-pliocene 
fauna were also in existence. 
The absence of gnawed bones had led Dr. Schmerling to 
infer that none of the Belgian caves which he explored had 
served as the dens of wild beasts; but there are many caves 
in Germany and England which have certainly been so in¬ 
habited, especially by the extinct hyaena and bear. 
A fine example of a hyaena’s den was aflbrded by the cave 
of Kirkdale, so well described by the late Dr. Buckland in 
his Reliquim Dilumanm. In that cave, above twenty-five 
miles N.N.E. of York, the remains of about 300 hyaenas, be- 
