24 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
dence. The contemporaneity of man with the extinct mammalia 
was lifted from the level of argument to that of demonstration by 
the discoveries in the Windmill Hill Cavern at Brixham in 1858, 
and each year since then has added to the testimony. Almost 
every part of the county has yielded implements of Palaeolithic 
or sub-Palaeolithic type. The caves at Brixham and Torquay, the 
submerged forest in Barnstaple Bay, the beds of our rivers, the depths 
of our peat bogs, the surface of our moors, our cliffs at Croyde and 
Bovisand, the low-lying gravels of the Axe Valley — cairn and 
barrow and kistvaen 1 — each and all have literally teemed with the 
flint chips, arrow heads, axes, and scrapers, of the earliest Devonians 
who have left a trace behind. We know not who they were, nor 
whence, save what we may glean by comparison with peoples who 
use such tools and such weapons now. When they lived we have 
a better clue. 
Mr. Pengelly, f.r.s., has shown that Kent's Cavern gives evidence 
of the existence of man in Devon in the Iron, Bronze, Neolithic (1), 
and Palaeolithic Ages. The Palaeolithic men he divides into two 
periods — the Hyaenine and the Ursine — as founded upon the special 
phenomena of that cavern. The Hyaenine deposit therein is separ- 
ated from the Ursine by a sheet of crystalline stalagmite, sometimes 
twelve feet thick ; it is separated still more decidedly by the differ- 
ence in the faunas. In the cave-earth the hyaena predominates ; 
from the cave-breccia he is wholly absent. The inference, from 
which Mr. Pengelly saw no escape, is that the hyaena reached 
Britain in the interval between the cave-breccia and cave-earth ; 
"in other words, that the last continental state of our country 
occurred during the interval . . . the conclusion thus forced on me 
compels me to believe also that the earliest men of Kent's Hole were 
inter-glacial if not pre-glacial." 2 
There is no need to argue seriously for the authenticity of the 
Palaeolithic implements. Their human origin is all but universally 
admitted by those who have studied them. That some exception- 
ally rough fragments of flint and chert, commonly so classed, may 
or may not owe their shape to the hand of man is conceded ; but 
when every doubtful example is eliminated an impregnable body 
of evidence remains. To rebut the testimony to the antiquity 
1 F. Brent, "The Stone Implements," Trans. Plym. Inst. vol. vii. pp. 
295-300. 
8 Vide "Address Geo. Sec. Brit. Ass." Plym. Meeting, Proc. Sec. pp. 64-65, 
