48 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
lying behind the picturesque town of Torquay, on the 
south coast of Devonshire, Mr MacEnery began to 
explore that great rambling subterranean series of 
chambers known as Kent's Cavern. In the dense layer 
of stalagmite, covering the floor of the cave, he found 
implements in stone and in bone, shaped by the hand of 
man, mingled with the bones of the same extinct animals 
as Dean Buckland had found at Paviland. The priest 
had the courage to draw a just conclusion from these 
observations in Kent's Cavern, and to face the opposi- 
tion of the Dean and of the opinion of his time. Mr 
MacEnery was convinced that man had lived in England 
as a contemporary of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the 
cave-bear, and all those animals which we now know were 
native to Europe before our present climatic conciitions 
dawned with the advent of Neolithic man. Mr MacEnery 
did not dare to even publish his records ; they were 
discovered and published by the Torquay Natural History 
Society many years after his death. ^ It was thus a priest 
who flrst broke into the world of Paleolithic man — at 
least in England. 
How slowly a belief in man's antiquity made headway 
will be realised if we follow Sir Charles Lyell in his 
journey abroad in 1833. ^^j ^^^ great geologist, was 
preparing a third edition of his Principles, and, as was 
his habit, visited every site in Europe where any discovery 
of note had been made. In 1833 his way lay through 
Belgium, and he stopped at Liege to see one of the 
Professors at the University — Dr Schmerling. The 
banks of the Meuse, before that river reaches Liege, are 
flanked by steep limestone clifi^s, often 200 feet in height. 
On their vertical face open many rambling caves. Dr 
Schmerling had been caught in the vortex of cave explora- 
tion, and was able to place before the English geologist in 
1833 the results gained by four years of severe toil 
in over forty caves. The collection represented those 
extinct forms of animals which Dean Buckland discovered 
' See a Memoir of William Pengelly, by Hester Pengelly (Mrs Forbes 
Julian), London, 1897. 
