24 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
after death. They were therefore contemporaneous ; and thus we 
have the Cattedown man brought back, at any rate, to the era of 
the English hyaena. For proof that the facts were so, there 
are the statements of Mr. Eobert Burnard and myself, that 
we removed many of the remains ourselves ; nay, that when the 
solider portion of the breccia was blasted out we were the first to 
examine it, and before anyone else had touched it took out not 
only portions of the human skeleton, but found traces of human 
occupation in the shape of fragments of charcoal embedded in 
the heart of masses of stalagmite then broken. 
Eut we do not stop here. In the cave-earth beneath this 
stalagmitic-breccia, and therefore anterior to it — sealed up and 
inaccessible until the breccia was removed, and certainly not more 
recent than the era of the English hyaena — we have the remains, 
not merely of the hyaena, but of the rhinoceros and the cave lion, 
and again of man. We have thus double proof — the stalagmitic- 
breccia gives us evidence of the association of man with the 
hyaena; the cave -earth of his association with the hyaena, 
rhinoceros, and lion. Is it possible then seriously to question 
either the integrity of the deposits when they were first opened 
by Mr. Burnard and myself; or the conclusion that the human 
remains found are those of men and women and children who 
were contemporary in this country with the mammoth and 
rhinoceros, the lion and the hyaena ? 
But for the stalagmitic seal of the breccia, which dates itself 
hyaennine, it might have been argued that the cave-earth was 
an ancient redeposit, and not necessarily contemporary. Such 
an objection might have been raised by a determined opponent of 
a hasty turn of mind. But I should have been content even 
in that case to argue that the presence in the cave-earth in 
proximity, of both humeri of what no reasonable man could 
question to be the same lion, and of an associated humerus 
and ulna of the same human subject, indicated that here also 
deposition took place, at least in these cases, before final in- 
tegumental decay. 
Something also may be held to turn on the physical con- 
dition of the bones— a point in its degree of much interest, 
though its importance is apt to be exaggerated. Many had been 
broken into minute and unidentifiable fragments. Of the 
remainder the bulk were light and adherent to the tongue; 
