12 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
My friend, Mr. Pengelly, commenting on the paper, 4 expressed 
a doubt whether proof of the presence of man in the bone caves 
first investigated would really have advanced the acceptance of a 
belief in the high antiquity of the human race ; and I am quite 
ready to admit that I may have under-rated the non-receptivity of 
new ideas in the average individual. Still, the point would have 
been forced to the front if there had been no concealment or 
destruction of evidence; and I held, and hold, that this alone 
must have been a gain. 
Be that as it may, it was perfectly clear to my mind that there 
was no ground for doubting the deliberate statement of our late 
distinguished member, Colonel Hamilton Smith, on which I 
founded my inclusion of man in the Oreston fauna — that he had 
himself seen a human bone from an Oreston cave, which was 
thrown away directly he pointed out its character. The actual 
assertion was, that among bones from the Oreston caves he 
" detected the upper portion of a humerus of man, which was 
immediately thrown away upon being pointed out to the possessor." 
And he added in a note, "This is not the only instance of 
the kind. Collectors in the plenitude of ignorance and pre- 
possession determined that human bones were of no consequence." 5 
The present discovery of the remains, not of one, but of 
several human beings in a bone cave at Cattedown, are some 
evidence that this accomplished naturalist was not likely to have 
been mistaken, and my reliance on his authority not so very 
venturesome after all. It is to me as great a satisfaction to claim 
for Colonel Hamilton Smith the honour, which undoubtedly 
belongs to him, of being the first scientific authority to accept 
man as a member of the English cave fauna, as it is to myself 
personally to be able to lay before not only this Society, but the 
scientific world, the most satisfactory and complete physical 
evidence extant of the human contingent of our Western cavern 
fauna, in their own proper persons. Not that the interest of the 
Cattedown cave is by any means confined to the relics of man; 
but that our ancient cave men have, as we shall see, put themselves 
at last upon record in such an emphatic manner as to compel 
recognition by the most sceptical, and to relegate the remainder 
controversy to side-issues of easy disposal. 
* Trans. Devon. Assoc. xvii. 426 et scq. 
5 Nat. Hist. Human Species (1848), 95, 96. 
