100 JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
be settled by the present generation. Unfortunately, with rare 
exceptions, they either failed to recognize the importance of the 
association of human relics with these of the extinct genera of 
mammals, or, biassed by preconceptions to which they attempted to 
make the results of their investigations square, they shut their 
eyes to the evidence on the other side; nay, in certain cases 
wilfully destroyed it. Something must be forgiven men who 
suddenly found themselves face to face with facts which upset their 
most cherished convictions ; and had such been content with 
simple credulity, we might have respected their prudence. But 
there is no excuse for deliberate falsification, or for the suppres- 
sion of testimony vital to the settlement of the question in 
hand. 
Mr. Mc Enery found human bones in Kent's Cavern, and was 
alleged to have concealed the discovery, from an over-anxiety to 
support the views of Dr. Buckland. Mr. J. C. Bellamy, however, 
quotes a letter from Mr. Mc Enery, in which he admits the dis- 
covery fully and frankly : but sets up a theory intended to deprive 
it of all special importance. "I have," he says, "found human 
bones and works of art . . . beneath the stalagmitic crust, and in 
association with the relics of fossil mammalia; but decidedly 
under such circumstances as left no doubt on my mind of their 
having been introduced subsequently to the fossil bones."* He 
had his theory that man and the mammoth did not coexist, and 
by it interpreted the phenomena. Systematic observers of later 
date, free from such preconceptions, have proved that his hypo- 
thesis of interment utterly fails to account for the presence in Kent's 
Hole of many relics of the human frame and handiwork. There, 
however, for many years the question remained. 
In the case of the Oreston caves, the destruction of the evidence 
of the inosculation of the bones of man and the extinct mammals 
was wilful ; and few are aware that any human remains were ever 
found in them. In a most important passage in his Natural 
History of the Human Species, f Col. Hamilton Smith says : 
" Before that period [1833], and repeatedly since, caves have been 
opened by quarrymen at Oreston, near Plymouth, several of which 
* Nat. Hist. South Devon., pp. 95-96. 
f This is not in Mr. Fengelly's Oreston Cave Literature, but will be found 
in his " Literature of Kent's Cavern," published in the previous year. 
"Trans. Devon. Assoc.," vol iv. part ii. p. 483. 
