THE PLEISTOCENE CAVES OF GERMANY AND GREAT BRITAIN.
Relation of Pleistocene to Prehistoric Period.--Magnitude of the
Interval.--Animals.--Physical changes.--Excavation and
filling up of Valleys: Fisherton; Freshford.--Comparison of
Deposits in Valleys with those of Caves.--Differences of Mineral
Condition.--The Pleistocene Caves of Germany: Gailenreuth;
Kühloch.--Of Great Britain.--The Caves of Yorkshire:
Kirkdale.--Of Derbyshire: The Dream Cave.--Of North Wales,
near St. Asaph.--Of South Wales, in counties of Glamorgan,
Caermarthen, Pembroke.--Of Monmouth.--Of Gloucestershire.--
Of Somersetshire: Uphill, Banwell, Bleadon, Sandford Hill, Wookey
Hole.--The District of Mendip higher in Pleistocene age than
now.--The condition of bones gnawed by Hyænas.--The Caves of
Devonshire: Oreston; Brixham; Kent’s Hole.--The probable age of
the Machairodus of Kent’s Hole.--Those of Ireland, Shandon.
_Relation of Pleistocene to Prehistoric Period._
We have seen, in the fifth and sixth chapters, that the caves offer
valuable information as to the prehistoric ethnology of Europe, and
that they prove the ancient neolithic population to stand directly
related to the Basque and Celtic elements in the present inhabitants
of Britain, France, and Spain. We shall discover in the course of
this and the following chapters that no such continuity can be made
out between the palæolithic man of the pleistocene age and any of the
races now living in our quarter of the world; and we shall see that
he is separated from his neolithic successor by an interval of time,
the length of which cannot be measured in terms of years. Before the
pleistocene group of caves be examined, it will be necessary to define
the relation that exists between the prehistoric and the pleistocene
periods.
_The Animals--Magnitude of Interval._
The prehistoric mammalia consist, as we have seen (p. 136), with the
solitary exception of the Irish elk, of the wild animals at present
living in Europe, together with the domestic species and varieties
introduced by man, probably from central Asia. In the rest of this
work we shall have to deal, not merely with the wild animals at
present inhabiting Europe, but also with those which have either
become extinct, or have migrated to Asia, America, or Africa. Besides
this addition to the European fauna in the pleistocene age, the total
absence of the domestic animals is a most important feature. The dog,
goat, sheep, Celtic short-horn, and domestic swine are conspicuous
by their absence: the reputed association of their remains with
those of the pleistocene mammals being due, in all the cases which I
have examined in France and Britain, to a confusion between distinct
strata in the same cave or river-deposit, which are respectively of
pleistocene and prehistoric or historic ages. Thus in the excavations
in the gravel underneath London, the Celtic short-horn and goat of the
superficial strata are very generally mixed with the reindeer and
mammoth of the pleistocene gravels below, by the collectors, and the
names of the domestic animals have crept into the pleistocene lists.
None of the domestic animals have been recorded from any carefully
explored strata of that age in any part of Europe.
The following late pleistocene species were unknown in Britain in the
prehistoric age:--
Glutton.
Spotted hyæna.
Panther.
Lion.
Lynx.
_Felis Caffer._
Musk-sheep.
Bison.
Hippopotamus.
Lemming.
Pouched marmot.
Tailless hare.
_Lepus diluvianus._
_Arvicola Gulielmi._
Cave-bear.
_Rhinoceros hemitœchus._
_R. tichorhinus._
_Elephas antiquus._
Mammoth.
The glutton, lynx, bison, and lemming, still live in Europe, the
spotted hyæna, _Felis Caffer_, and hippopotamus are peculiar to Africa,
the lion to Africa and Asia, and the last seven species are extinct.
The _Machairodus cultridens_ and _Rhinoceros megarhinus_ probably
disappeared in an early stage of the pleistocene. It may reasonably be
inferred, from the migration and extinction of so many species between
the close of the pleistocene and beginning of the historic period, that
the interval was of considerable length; for it would be impossible for
such changes to have taken place in a short time.
The same sharp line of demarcation exists between the two faunas on
the continent. The panther, _Felis Caffer_, lynx, spotted hyæna,
musk-sheep, hippopotamus, and the extinct group disappeared. The
African elephant forsook Spain and Sicily, the striped hyæna the
south of France, before the prehistoric period; while the _Elephas
meridionalis_ and pigmy hippopotamus of Sicily, and the pigmy elephant
and gigantic dormouse of Malta, became extinct. Speaking in general
terms, the wild fauna of Europe, as we have it now, dates from the
beginning of the prehistoric age, and consists merely of those animals
which were able to survive the changes by which their pleistocene
congeners were banished or destroyed. The arrival of the domestic
animals under the care of man in the neolithic age, and their extension
over the whole of Europe in a wild or semi-wild state, coupled with the
disappearance of the wild species mentioned above, constitutes a change
in the mammal life at least as important as any of those which define
the meiocene from the pleiocene, or the pleiocene from the pleistocene
periods.
_Physical changes--The excavation and filling up of Valleys._
The magnitude of the interval between the two periods may also be
gathered from the great changes which have taken place in physical
geography. In nearly every valley in Great Britain, certain areas to be
mentioned presently excepted, are strata of sand and gravel, proved to
be of pleistocene age by their fossil mammals, and by their fluviatile
shells to have been deposited by rivers. They occur at various heights,
forming sometimes terraces, and at others isolated patches, which
were accumulated when the river flowed at their level, and before the
valleys were cut down to their present depth. Those at Fisherton near
Salisbury, described by Sir Charles Lyell, Mr. Prestwich, Mr. John
Evans,[175] and others, may be taken as an example.
[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Section of Valley-gravels at Fisherton.
(Evans.)]
The valley through which the river Wily flows is excavated in the chalk
(Fig. 74), and on its northern side fluviatile deposits occur at two
levels, represented in the accompanying section. One patch of gravel,
about twelve feet thick, _a_, lies about eighty feet above the present
level of the Wily; while a second, _b_, consisting of clayey brickearth
or loam, with seams of gravel, and fluviatile shells, sweeps down
from a lower point to the bottom of the valley, and passes under the
river. From the deposit _a_, Dr. Blackmore obtained many rudely-chipped
implements, of the same palæolithic type as those found with the
extinct mammalia in the gravel beds at Amiens and Abbeville in the
valley of the Somme. In the deposit _b_, fossil mammalia were met with
belonging to the following animals:--
Spotted hyæna.
Lion.
Reindeer.
Stag.
Bison.
Urus.
Musk-sheep.
Wild boar.
Horse.
Woolly rhinoceros.
Mammoth.
Lemming.
Pouched marmot.
Hare.
Dr. Blackmore subsequently discovered a flint implement along with
these animals, of the same type as those previously met with in the
deposit _a_.
A horizontal stretch of alluvium, _c_, deposited by the floods,
occupies the present bottom of the valley. In this section it is plain
that the gravels and brickearth at _a_ and _b_ were deposited by a
river, which formerly flowed at those levels. In other words, the
valley of the Wily was excavated during the time that the pleistocene
strata _a_ and _b_ were being formed, while palæolithic man and the
extinct animals were living in the neighbourhood. The position also of
_b_ below the present bottom of the valley proves that the latter then
was deeper than it is now. The prehistoric alluvium, _c_, represents
the last stage in the history of the valley in which it is beginning to
be filled with the deposits of floods. While it was being accumulated
none of the animals of _a_ and _b_ were living in the district except
the hare, urus, stag, horse, and wild boar.
A somewhat similar section is exposed in the valley of the Avon at
Freshford, near Bath, in a railway cutting, at a height of about
thirty-five feet above the river. A thick mass of gravel abuts directly
against a cleft of inferior oolite (Fig. 75), and gradually dies down
to the alluvium. In it Mr. Charles Moore discovered the remains of the
musk-sheep, and the Rev. H. H. Winwood those of the mammoth, bison,
horse, and reindeer. In this case the pleistocene strata occupied the
side of one of the valleys which had been deepened since the time of
their deposit.
[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Section of Valley-gravels at Freshford, Bath.
4, Red loam, 5ft. 6in.; 3, Oolitic wash, 1ft.; 2, Clay with flints,
4ft. 10in.; 1, Gravel with fossil mammals, 8ft.]
The alluvium in the neighbourhood of Bath contains in its lower
portion a layer of peat, with bones of the Celtic short-horn (_Bos
longifrons_), stag, roe, horse, goat, and pig; and in its upper part
are old refuse heaps, proved to be Roman by the coins and ware, which
are also met with at various points underneath the surface soil, and
sometimes at considerable depths. It is, therefore, of prehistoric and
historic age, and since it is found only in the valley bottoms, we
may conclude that the present courses of the rivers along the sides
of which it is found date back from the prehistoric age; while their
ancient courses are marked by the fluviatile deposits with the extinct
mammalia standing at various levels, the higher being the older. In the
section at Fisherton we have evidence that the river flowed at a lower
level in the pleistocene age than in the prehistoric, and in that at
Freshford that the lower portion of the valley had been excavated after
the pleistocene strata had been formed. One or other of these physical
changes is to be traced in nearly all river valleys.[176] We may
conclude that both imply a considerable lapse of time, because similar
changes are now produced with extreme slowness. In the pleistocene
river deposits, which lie scattered about at various heights on the
valley sides, we seek in vain for neolithic implements, or domestic
animals. In the low-lying alluvia, and accumulations of peat, we seek
equally in vain for traces of palæolithic man, or of the extinct
mammalia, except the Irish elk.
We may also gather, from the localization of the prehistoric alluvia
close to the present streams, that the time represented by its
accumulation is insignificant in comparison with the long lapse of ages
implied by the pleistocene gravels and brickearths, that were deposited
at various heights during the excavation of the valleys. The general
surface of the valleys has undergone but little change since history
began, and the excavation by the rivers has been so small as to have
escaped accurate measurement. The alluvia represent the principal work
done since the close of the pleistocene period.
The most important testimony that the interval between the two periods
was very long, is offered by the climatal change, and the severance
of Britain from the continent. The arctic severity of the pleistocene
winter in these latitudes had passed away before the prehistoric age,
and the pleistocene valleys of the North Sea, St. George’s Channel, the
British, and Irish Channels had been depressed beneath the waves of the
sea before any prehistoric strata yet known had been deposited. The
evidence that these changes actually took place must be referred to the
two following chapters.
_Comparison of Deposits in Valleys with those in Caves._
If these valley deposits be compared with the contents of some of
the bone caves, such, for example, as those of the Victoria Cave
(compare Figs. 74 and 75 with Figs. 20, 21, 29), it will be seen
that they present the same section. The pleistocene gravels and
brick-earths of the one correspond with the lower strata of the other,
and contain the same extinct animals. The prehistoric alluvium of the
one is represented by the layer containing neolithic bronze or iron
implements, as well as the same animals; while the historic strata
are represented in both by the superficial accumulations. The only
difference indeed between the one and the other is, that in the former
the strata of the three periods are spread over a wide area, while in
the latter they are super-imposed in vertical order, the pleistocene
below, the prehistoric in the middle, and the historic on the surface.
_Difference in Mineral Condition of Deposits in Caves._
The prehistoric, and the historic strata in caves differ from the
pleistocene in their physical constitution. They are darker in colour,
and more loosely stratified, and contain bones in a more friable and
less mineralized condition, and are more free from stalagmite.
_The Caves of Germany: Gailenreuth._
The use of fossil bones for medicinal purposes led, as I have already
mentioned in the first chapter, to the exploration of caves, which
were first scientifically examined in Germany towards the close of
the eighteenth century. They abound in all the limestone plateaux,
especially in the region of Franconia, and in that of the Hartz. Among
them the most interesting, perhaps, is that of Gailenreuth, explored
by Esper, Rosenmüller, Goldfuss, Buckland, Lord Enniskillen, and Sir
Philip Egerton. It penetrates a lofty cliff, that forms a side of the
deep gorge which the river Weissent has cut in the rock, at a point
about three hundred feet above the water level.
The entrance, Dr. Buckland[177] writes, is about seven feet high
and twelve feet broad, and within it a short passage leads into two
chambers (Fig. 76, A and B),[178] hung with stalactites, and with the
floors covered by a dense stalagmitic pavement, that has been more
or less broken up by repeated diggings. These floors are perfectly
horizontal, the level of that of B being considerably below that of A.
They rest on an accumulation of reddish grey loam, containing pebbles,
and angular limestone blocks, and vast quantities of the bones and
teeth of the animals formerly living in the district. The depth of this
ossiferous deposit has not been ascertained, but in the further end
of the chamber B, it has been proved to be more than twenty-five feet
thick.
[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Section of Gailenreuth Cave. (Buckland.)]
The remains of the animals lie scattered in the wildest confusion;
sometimes being completely matted together, but more generally each
bone is enveloped in earth. They belong to the lion, the cave variety
of the spotted hyæna, the cave-bear, grizzly bear, mammoth, Irish elk,
and reindeer, as well as to those species which are still to be found
in Germany, such as the glutton, brown bear, wolf, fox, and stag.
It is very difficult to account for such an accumulation as this, but
it was probably introduced through the present entrance, and thence
into the chamber B, passing from the higher to the lower levels. The
teeth-marks on the bones show that some of the animals had formed
the prey of the hyænas, but had they introduced all the bones there
would have been distinct strata marking the floors of occupation, as
in Wookey Hole (Fig. 88). Moreover, no perfect skulls, such as those
of the bears, would have escaped their powerful teeth. The pebbles in
the loam bear testimony to the passage of a current of water. And if
we suppose that the cave was subject to floods, such as those in the
water-caves described in the second chapter, the scattering of the
bones through the loam may be explained. This, however, could not have
happened had the cave then opened on the face of a nearly vertical
cliff, and the only condition under which it would have been possible
is, that the present entrance should have been directly connected with
a stream flowing from the surface, that is to say, over the space now
occupied by the gorge of the Weissent. If this view, advanced by Dr.
Buckland, be accepted, the remoteness of the date of the filling up of
the cave may be measured by the fact, that since that time the gorge
has been cut down by the Weissent to a depth of more than 300 feet.
The stream by which the contents of the cave were introduced had a
course probably analogous to that of Dalebeck (Fig. 6) and the remains
of the animals were caught up from the surface, and accumulated in
the subterranean chambers which it traversed. Their abundance offers
no obstacle to this view, since wild animals frequent their drinking
places in vast numbers, and fall a prey to the carnivora which lurk
near the streams, and very many tumble into the natural pitfalls, or
swallow-holes, so universal in limestone districts.
_The Cave of Kühloch._
Very many other caves occur in the neighbourhood, most of them, such as
those of Zahnloch, celebrated for the abundance of fossil teeth, Mokas,
Rabenstein, and others, of which the cave of Kühloch alone demands
notice.
The cave of Kühloch is situated opposite to the castle of Rabenstein,
in the gorge of the Esbach, at about thirty feet from the bottom. Its
exterior presents a lofty arch in a nearly perpendicular cliff, about
thirty feet wide and twenty feet high, and the entrance gradually leads
into two large chambers “both of which terminate in a close round end,
or cul-de-sac, at the distance of about 100 feet from the entrance.
It is intersected by no fissures, and has no lateral communications
connecting it with any other caverns, except one small hole close to
its mouth, and which opens also to the valley.” The first thirty feet
present a steep slope towards the entrance. Dr. Buckland describes the
contents of the chambers in the following words:[179]--
“It is literally true that in this single cavern (the size and
proportions of which are nearly equal to those of the interior of a
large church) there are hundreds of cart-loads of black animal dust
entirely covering the whole floor, to a depth which must average at
least six feet, and which, if we multiply this depth by the length
and breadth of the cavern, will be found to exceed 5,000 cubic feet.
The whole of this mass has been again and again dug over in search
of teeth and bones, which it still contains abundantly, though in
broken fragments. The state of these is very different from that of
the bones we find in any of the other caverns, being of a black, or,
more properly speaking, dark umber colour throughout, like the bones
of mummies, and many of them readily crumbling under the finger into
a soft dark powder resembling mummy powder, and being of the same
nature with the black earth in which they are embedded. The quantity
of animal matter accumulated on this floor is the most surprising, and
the only thing of the kind I ever witnessed; and many hundred--I may
say thousand--individuals must have contributed their remains to make
up this appalling mass of the dust of death. It seems in great part to
be derived from comminuted and pulverized bone; for the fleshy parts
of animal bodies produce by their decomposition so small a quantity of
permanent earthy residuum, that we must seek for the origin of this
mass principally in decayed bones. The cave is so dry, that the black
earth lies in the state of loose powder, and rises in dust under the
feet; it also retains so large a proportion of its original animal
matter that it is occasionally used by the peasants as an enriching
manure for the adjacent meadows. I have stated that the total quantity
of animal matter that lies within this cavern cannot be computed at
less than 5,000 cubic feet; now allowing two cubic feet of dust and
bones for each individual animal, we shall have in this single vault
the remains of at least 2,500 bears, a number which may have been
supplied in the space of 1,000 years by a mortality at the rate of two
and a half per annum.”
Dr. Buckland’s explanation, that the cave was inhabited by bears for
long generations, is probably true. The absence of pebbles and silt
show that water had no share in the introduction of the remains; their
preservation is due to the dryness of the cave, and to its proximity to
the outer atmosphere.
The famous caves of Sundwig, Schartsfeld, and Bauman’s Hole, belong to
the same class as Gailenreuth, and offer no differences which need be
described.
These explorations establish the fact that, in the antediluvian age
which we now term pleistocene, the lion, the cave-bear and grizzly
bear, and cave-hyæna abounded in Germany, and that they sought as
their prey not merely the wild animals now living in that region,
but the reindeer, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and Irish elk. All the
discoveries in the German caves from the date of the exploration of
Gailenreuth have merely verified this conclusion without adding any new
fact of importance.
_The Caves of Great Britain._
These discoveries in the German caves led to the exploration of those
in our country. Dr. Buckland visited Gailenreuth in 1816, and in
1821 applied the result of his knowledge gained in Germany to the
investigation of the famous cavern of Kirkdale.[180]
_The Hyæna-den at Kirkdale._
[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Plan of Kirkdale Cave. (Taylor.)]
The cave of Kirkdale (Figs. 77, 78) was discovered in a quarry in
the vale of Pickering, about twenty-five miles to the NN.E. of
York, at a point where the dale of Holmbeck joins Kirkdale. The
entrance, eighty feet above the valley bottom and twenty feet from
the surface of the plateau above, was about three feet high and six
feet wide, and led into a passage from five to ten feet wide, which
ran nearly horizontally into the rock, and branched off into smaller
ramifications. Its general form and size may be gathered from the
examination of the accompanying woodcuts, which were published by Mr.
Taylor in “Macmillan’s Magazine,” in September 1862. The roof was for
the most part free from stalactite, and there was no continuous coating
of stalagmite on the floor, but merely here and there a few calcareous
bosses termed “cows’ paps” by the workmen.
[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Sections of Kirkdale Cave. (Taylor.)]
A layer of fine red loam covered the bottom, in the lower portions
of which were large numbers of gnawed and broken bones, and teeth,
for the most part of the same species as those formed in the German
caves. In some places they were lying in little confused heaps, and in
others, where the loam was thin, were exposed to the calcareous drip
and cemented into a mass, their upper portions projecting through the
stalagmite “like the legs of pigeons through pie-crust,” and their
irregular distribution resembling that of the fragments scattered on
the floor of a dog-kennel.
The remains of the animals were incredibly abundant, when the small
space in which they were packed was taken into consideration. Those of
the hyæna are estimated by Dr. Buckland as belonging to between two or
three hundred individuals of all ages. The lion and the cave-bear, the
wild boar, the hippopotamus (Fig. 79) an extinct kind of elephant (_E.
antiquus_), and the rhinoceros named by Dr. Falconer _R. hemitœchus_,
the reindeer, and Irish elk are also represented, but the species
of most common occurrence are the bison and the horse. With a few
exceptions all the bones with marrow were broken, and scarred by teeth,
while the solid and marrowless were more or less perfect.
[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Molar of Hippopotamus. (Buckland.)]
Dr. Buckland’s method of solving the problem of the introduction of
remains of so many and different animals into so small a space, is
a model of scientific analysis. He argues from the abundance of the
remains of the hyæna, and from the correspondence of their teeth with
the marks on the bones, and from the quantity of their coprolites,
that the cave was inhabited by many generations of those animals, and
that the gnawed fragments were relics of their prey. The hyænas of the
present day inhabit caves strewn with the bones of their prey, which
are crushed by their powerful jaws into the same form as those of
Kirkdale. He further demonstrated the truth of his conclusion by the
crucial experiment of subjecting the leg-bone of an ox to a spotted
hyæna from the Cape of Good Hope, in Wombwell’s Menagerie. “I was
able,” he writes,[181] “to observe the animal’s mode of proceeding in
the destruction of bones: the shin-bone of an ox being presented to
this hyæna, he began to bite off with his molar teeth large fragments
from its upper extremity, and swallowed them whole as fast as they were
broken off. On his reaching the medullary cavity, the bone split into
angular fragments, many of which he caught up greedily and swallowed
entire: he went on cracking it till he had extracted all the marrow,
licking out the lowest portion of it with his tongue: this done, he
left untouched the lower condyle, which contains no marrow, and is
very hard. The state and form of this residuary fragment are precisely
like those of similar bones at Kirkdale; the marks of teeth on it
are very few, as the bone usually gave off a splinter before the
large conical teeth had forced a hole through it; these few, however,
entirely resemble the impressions we find on the bones at Kirkdale;
the small splinters also in form and size, and manner of fracture, are
not distinguishable from the fossil ones. I preserve all the fragments
and the gnawed portions of this bone, for the sake of comparison by
the side of those I have from the antediluvian den in Yorkshire: there
is absolutely no difference between them, except in point of age. The
animal left untouched the solid bones of the tarsus and carpus, and
such parts of the cylindrical bones as we find untouched at Kirkdale,
and devoured only the parts analogous to those which are there
deficient. The keeper, pursuing this experiment to its final result,
presented me the next morning with a large quantity of _album græcum_,
disposed in balls, that agree entirely in size, shape, and substance
with those that were found in the den at Kirkdale. The power of his
jaws far exceeded any animal force of the kind I ever saw exerted, and
reminded me of nothing so much as of a miner’s crushing mill, or the
scissors with which they cut off bars of iron and copper in the metal
foundries.”
[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Leg-bones gnawed by Hyænas--1, of Ox in
Menagerie; 2, of Bison in Kirkdale. (Buckland.)]
The exact correspondence of one of the fragments of the tibia of an ox,
gnawed by the Cape hyæna, with the corresponding bone of the bison from
Kirkdale, may be gathered from a comparison of the two figured in Fig.
80, in which the teeth-marks _a_, _b_, and _c_, are very distinct. The
same kind of identity runs through the whole series of bones gnawed by
the living and fossil hyænas.
Dr. Buckland’s conclusion, that the Kirkdale cave was the den of the
spotted hyænas (_H. crouta_) that preyed upon the animals of Yorkshire
in ancient times, and that it was undisturbed down to the time of its
exploration, cannot be disputed. The tread of the hyænas in their
passage to and fro had polished some of the bones and jaws scattered on
the floor, and the polished surfaces were uppermost, the rest of the
fragments being rough. And Prof. Phillips informs me that the leg-bone
of a ruminant was discovered wedged into a small fissure in the floor,
with that portion which was within reach of the hyæna’s teeth gnawed
away, while the rest was uninjured. The hyæna had lost his bone in the
fissure, and was only able to nibble the end which projected. In these
incidents we have a vivid picture of an hyæna’s den in Yorkshire during
the pleistocene age, with the contents left in their natural order and
not rearranged by the passage of water.
The Victoria cave near Settle, in Yorkshire, described in the third
chapter, has also been occupied by hyænas.
_Caves of Derbyshire: the Dream-cave near Wirksworth._
The Dream-cave, near Wirksworth,[182] in Derbyshire, contrasts with
that of Kirkdale in the perfect state of the bones which it contains.
It was discovered in 1822, in following a vein of lead (Fig. 81).
The miners suddenly broke into a hollow, _c_, filled with red earth
and stones, and as they continued their shaft downwards the sides
continually closed upon them until the roof of a cave was revealed.
A nearly perfect skeleton of the rhinoceros was discovered in the
earth, as well as bones of the horse, reindeer, and urus. After a large
quantity of the earth had been removed, the surface soil, _i_, at a
little distance began to sink, and ultimately a vertical shaft was
found to connect the cave with the surface. Into this the animals had
fallen, just as at the present time sheep and oxen frequently perish in
similar natural pitfalls in the limestone strata.
[Illustration: FIG. 81.--The Dream-cave, Wirksworth. (Buckland.)
A Shaft following lead-vein.
B Supposed continuation of lead-vein.
C Cave.
D Swallow-hole.
E Ossiferous loam.
F Antler of deer.
G Rhinoceros.
H Limestone.
I Natural entrance.
]
Other caves and fissures in Derbyshire have yielded remains of the
extinct animals: those of Balleye, near Wirksworth, and of Doveholes,
near Chaple-en-le-Frith, the mammoth, and a small cave in Hartle Dale,
near Castleton, explored by Mr. Pennington and myself in 1872, the
mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros.
_The Caves of North Wales, near St. Asaph._
The ossiferous caves and fissures at Cefn, near St. Asaph, in the
mountain limestone that forms the south side of the Vale of Clwyd, were
first described in 1833,[183] by the Rev. Edward Stanley, afterwards
Bishop of Norwich, who explored that which Mr. E. Lloyd had discovered
about half-way down the vertical cliff, in the grounds of Cefn Hall.
It consists of a narrow passage, turning on itself, and communicating
with the surface of the cliff by two entrances, which were completely
blocked up with red silt, containing a vast quantity of bones in very
bad preservation. The bottom has not yet been reached. In one portion I
found, in 1872, a deposit of comminuted bone with scarcely any mixture
of loam, that rose in clouds of dust as it was disturbed. The animals
belonged to the same class as those of Germany, the cave-bear, spotted
hyæna, and reindeer, as well as the hippopotamus, _Elephas antiquus_
and _Rhinoceros hemitœchus_ of the Kirkdale cave. Pebbles derived from
the boulder clay, and rounded waterworn fragments of bone, showed that
the contents had been introduced into this cave by a stream. Some of
the remains, which were marked with teeth, may have been introduced by
the hyænas. The flint-flakes found with the human skull and cut antlers
of stag, already referred to in the fifth chapter, were discovered in
the lower entrance.
The same group of animals has been obtained by Mrs. Williams Wynn, the
Rev. D. R. Thomas, and myself out of a horizontal cave at the head
of the defile leading down from Cefn to Pont Newydd, in which the
remains are embedded in a stiff clay, consisting of rearranged boulder
clay, and are in the condition of waterworn pebbles. From it I have
identified the brown, grizzly, and cave-bear. A further examination by
the Rev. D. R. Thomas, and Prof. Hughes, has recently resulted in the
discovery of rude implements of felstone, and a tooth which has been
identified by Prof. Busk as a human molar of unusual size.[184]
[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Left Lower Jaw of Glutton, Plas Heaton Cave.]
A third cave in the neighbourhood at Plas Heaton, explored in 1870 by
Mr. Heaton and Prof. Hughes, furnished the remains of the cave-bear,
spotted hyæna, bison, and reindeer, and a remarkably fine specimen
of the lower jaw of a glutton (Fig. 82), which I have described in
the “Geological Journal” (vol. xxvii. p. 406). In a fourth cave, at
Gallfaenan, the bear and reindeer were discovered. It is evident from
the presence of numerous bones gnawed by hyænas in these caves, that
the valleys of the Clwyd and the Elwy were the favourite haunts of that
animal in the pleistocene age.
_Caves of South Wales in the counties of Glamorgan and Caermarthen._
The earliest cavern explored in South Wales is that of Crawley
Rocks,[185] Oxwich Bay, about twelve miles from Swansea. It was
discovered in quarrying the mountain limestone in 1792, and contained
the remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, stag, and hyæna. It was
completely destroyed before Dr. Buckland identified these animals in
the collection of Miss Talbot of Penrice Castle.[186]
The line of cliffs, bounding the rocky peninsula of Gower, contains
the cave of Paviland, described in the seventh chapter (p. 232), as
well as the group explored by Colonel Wood of Start Hall, from the
year 1848[187] to the present time, Bacon Hole, Minchin Hole, Bosco’s
Den, Devil’s Hole, Crow Hole, Raven’s Cliff, Spritsail Tor, and Long
Hole, which are described by the late Dr. Falconer. The _Rhinoceros
hemitœchus_ was met with in comparative abundance, and in association
with the woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and _E. antiquus_. In Bosco’s
Den there were no less than 750 shed antlers of reindeer; and in
Long Hole, many flint-flakes were discovered in 1860 underneath the
stalagmite, and in association with the extinct mammalia, which prove,
as Dr. Falconer points out, that man inhabited that district in the
pleistocene age.
These caves and fissures were at all levels in the cliff, and in some
the bottoms were covered with a stratum of marine sand with sea shells,
which showed that they had been washed by the sea before they had been
filled by the ossiferous débris. Most of them had probably been filled
by streams in the same manner as Gailenreuth and Wirksworth. They
abound on the coast merely because a clear section has been worn by the
waves. A straight cut through the rocks in any part of the district
would probably show them to occur in equal abundance inland.
_Caves in Pembrokeshire._
The patches of limestone on the opposite side of Caermarthen Bay, in
the neighbourhood of Tenby, also contain ossiferous caverns. The Rev.
G. N. Smith,[188] of Gumfriston, has made a fine collection of bones
and teeth of mammoth and hyæna, from a fissure in the Blackrock Quarry,
close to Tenby, from a fissure in the cliff on Caldy Island, and from
the Coygan cave in an outlier of limestone, near Pendine, and has
discovered flakes of flint and of a peculiar hornstone in the “tunnel
cave” termed the Hoyle, underneath stalagmite, in a stratum containing
bones of the bear and reindeer. With the exception of the fissure in
the Blackrock Quarry none of these have been fully explored. On a visit
to Tenby, in 1872, I obtained many flint flakes, and bones broken by
man, from the breccia in the Hoyle; and from a fissure on Caldy Island,
numerous bones and teeth of young wolves, which represented a whole
litter, and two metatarsals of bison, cemented together into a compact
mass.
The discovery of mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, Irish elk, bison, wolf,
lion, and bear, on so small an island as Caldy, indicates that a
considerable change has taken place in the relation of the land to
the sea in that district since those animals were alive. It would have
been impossible for so many and so large animals to have obtained
food on so small an island. It may therefore be reasonably concluded
that, when they perished in the fissures, Caldy was not an island, but
a precipitous hill, overlooking the broad valley now covered by the
waters of the Bristol Channel, but then affording abundant pasture. The
same inference may also be drawn from the vast numbers of animals found
in the Gower caves, which could not have been supported by the scant
herbage of the limestone hills of that district. We must, therefore,
picture to ourselves a fertile plain occupying the whole of the Bristol
Channel, and supporting herds of reindeer, horses, and bisons, many
elephants and rhinoceroses, and now and then being traversed by a stray
hippopotamus, which would afford abundant prey to the lions, bears, and
hyænas inhabiting all the accessible caves, as well as to their great
enemy and destroyer man. We shall see in the ninth chapter that the
elevation of the whole district above its present level is part of the
general elevation of north-western Europe, and no mere small or local
phenomenon.
_Cave in Monmouthshire._
King Arthur’s cave,[189] on the side of a beautifully wooded knoll,
overlooking the valley of the Wye, near Whitchurch, in Monmouthshire,
explored by the Rev. W. S. Symonds in 1871, is a hyæna den, like that
of Kirkdale, containing the gnawed remains of the lion, Irish elk,
mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer. Flint flakes, however,
occurred in the undisturbed strata, which prove that it was also the
resort of man. Mr. Symonds believes that the sand and gravel inside
were deposited by the Wye, at a time when it flowed 300 feet above its
present course, or before the valley was cut down to that depth. If
this conclusion be true, the date of the occupation must be separated
from the present day by a vast interval, which is only to be measured
by the subsequent erosion of the valley by the slow operation of the
subaerial agents, running water, ice, snow, and carbonic acid.
The only remains of the mammoth which I have examined belong to young
individuals, and consist of the second and third milk-molars, a fact
which I have very generally observed in hyænas’ dens. The older
mammoths would not fall an easy prey to so cowardly an animal. The cave
had also been inhabited by man after the pleistocene age, for coarse
pottery of the neolithic kind, and flint flakes, were dug out of an
upper stratum, while I was watching the excavation, in company with the
Rev. W. S. Symonds, and the “Wanderers” field club.
_Caves of Gloucestershire and Somersetshire._
The outliers of mountain limestone, on the southern side of the
Bristol Channel, have long been known for their ossiferous caverns and
fissures. From a fissure in Durdham Down,[190] near Bristol, Mr. J. S.
Miller obtained fragments of bones, about the year 1820, and among them
Dr. Buckland notices the fossil joint of the hind-leg of a horse, the
astragalus being held in natural position, between the tibia and the
calcaneum, by stalagmite. Subsequently a large series of animals of the
same species as those of Gower were discovered in it by Mr. Stutchbury,
and are preserved in the Bristol Museum.
_Caves of the Mendip Hills._
The caves of the Mendip Hills were known to contain bones as early as
the middle of the eighteenth century, when that of Hutton,[191] near
Weston-super-Mare, was discovered in working the ochre and calamine
which fills some of the fissures. The miners having opened an ochre
pit, south of the little village of Hutton, discovered a fissure in
the limestone full of good ochre, which they followed to a depth
of eight yards, until it led into a cavern, the floor of which was
formed of ochre, with large quantities of white bones on the surface,
and scattered through its mass. Dr. Calcott describes the bones as
projecting from the sides, roof, and floor of the excavation in such
quantities as to resemble the contents of a charnel-house. Subsequently
it was fully explored by the Rev. D. Williams, and Mr. Beard, of
Banwell.
We owe the exploration of the neighbouring caves of Banwell, Sandford
Hill, Bleadon, Goat’s Hole, in Burrington Combe, and Uphill,[192] to
the joint labours of the two above-mentioned gentlemen, extending over
the period which elapsed between 1821 and 1860. The vast quantity of
remains which they obtained can only be realized by a visit to the
Museum of the Somerset Archæological and Natural History Society,
at Taunton.[193] They belong to the same species as those already
mentioned from the caves of South Wales. The fauna of the Mendip is,
however, characterized by the great number of lions, and by a few
fragments of the glutton. Of the former animal, Mr. Ayshford Sanford
and myself have met with sufficient remains to figure nearly every
portion of the skeleton, and the skulls prove that it was not a tiger,
as it is considered to be by some naturalists, but a true lion,
differing in no respect, except in its large size, from those now
living in Asia and Africa.
All these caverns consist of chambers at various levels more or less
connected with fissures, and, from the perfect condition of the bones
they must have been inaccessible to the bone-destroying hyæna. Their
contents were introduced, as is suggested by Dr. Buckland, from the
surface by streams falling into swallow-holes (see Fig. 81), which have
now, under the changed physical conditions, ceased to flow.
The extraordinary quantity of remains preserved in one cave may be, to
some extent, verified by a visit to that at Banwell. It consists of two
large chambers, the upper one filled with thousands of bones of bison,
horse, and reindeer, taken out of the red silt which originally filled
it to the roof; the lower one full of the undisturbed contents, from
which the bones project in the wildest confusion. This accumulation
has been introduced by water, through a vertical fissure which opened
on the surface. It is evident, from the very nearly perfect skulls of
wolf and bear which were discovered, that the cave was not used as a
den by the hyænas. They are, however, proved to have been living close
by at the time, since their skulls, and the gnawed antlers of reindeer,
have been discovered inside. They were probably swept in by the stream
along with the other bones.
_The Uphill Cave._
The Cave of Uphill,[194] discovered in 1826, by some workmen, and
explored by the Rev. D. Williams, merits especial notice, from the
peculiar conditions under which the remains of the extinct animals
occurred. Like the other caves of the Mendips, it consists of fissures
opening into chambers. In the upper part of one of these fissures were
the remains of rhinoceros, hyæna, bear, horse, bison, and wild boar,
imbedded in loam which rested on two large masses of limestone that had
fallen so as to block up the fissure. Below this were no remains of the
extinct animals, and the fissure ultimately led into a cave opening
upon the line of cliffs. This latter had been inhabited within historic
times, since many bones of sheep, or goat, and pieces of pottery, were
met with, as well as a coin of the Emperor Julian. In this case, owing
to the extraordinary accident of the fissure being blocked up by a
fall of stone, the pleistocene accumulation is vertically above the
historic; and had the barrier given way, Mr. Williams would undoubtedly
have discovered the remains of the extinct mammalia, lying in a heap
above the comparatively modern historic stratum. It seems to me very
probable that some such accident may have caused the occurrence of
the pleiocene machairodus in the Kent’s Hole cavern, in association
with the pleistocene mammalia. In the long lapse of ages between the
pleistocene and the present day, such accidents would be likely to
occur in some few caverns, and we might expect to find remains of
widely different ages, in certain exceptional cases, lying side by
side, or even the older resting vertically over the newer. At all
events we must conclude, that superposition, or association, cannot be
rigidly enforced as tests of relative age in all ossiferous caverns.
_The Hyæna-den of Wookey Hole._
The Hyæna-den of Wookey Hole,[195] near Wells, on the south side of
the Mendips, which I explored with the Rev. J. Williamson in 1859,
and in the following years with Messrs. Willett, Parker, and Ayshford
Sanford, is worthy of a more detailed notice, because it was among
the first caverns in this country in which works of art were found
under conditions that proved the co-existence of man with the extinct
mammalia.
The ravine in which it was discovered, in 1852, is one of the many
which pierce the dolomitic conglomerate, or petrified sea-beach, of
the Triassic age, resting at the foot of the cliffs from which it
was torn by the waves, and overlying the lower slopes of the Mendips
(see Fig. 1). Open to the south, it runs almost horizontally into the
mountain-side, until closed abruptly northwards by a perpendicular
wall of rock, 200 feet or more in height, ivy-covered, and affording
a dwelling-place to innumerable jackdaws. Out of a cave at its base,
in which Dr. Buckland discovered pottery and human teeth, flows the
river Axe, in a canal cut in the rock. In cutting this passage, that
the water might be conveyed to a large paper-mill close by, the mouth
of the hyæna-den was intersected in 1852, and from that time up to
December 1859 it was undisturbed save by rabbits and badgers, and even
they did not penetrate far into the interior, or make deep burrows.
Close to the mouth of the cave the workmen (employed in making this
canal) found more than 300 Roman coins, among which were those of
Allectus and of Commodus. When the Rev. J. Williamson and myself began
our exploration, about twelve feet of the entrance of the cave had been
cut away, and large quantities of the earth, stones, and animal remains
had been used in the formation of an embankment for the stream which
runs past the present entrance of the cave.
According to the testimony of the workmen, the bones and teeth formed
a layer about twelve inches in thickness, which rested immediately
upon the conglomerate-floor, while they were comparatively scarce in
the overlying mass of stones and red earth. The workmen state also
that at the time of the discovery of the cave the hillside presented
no concavity to mark its presence. So completely was the cave filled
with débris up to the very roof, that we were compelled to cut our way
into it. Of the stones scattered irregularly through the matrix of
red earth, some were angular, others water-worn; all are derived from
the decomposition of the dolomitic conglomerate in which the cave is
hollowed. Near the entrance, and at a depth of five feet from the roof,
were three layers of peroxide of manganese, full of bony splinters,
and, passing obliquely up towards the southern side of the cave and
over a ledge of rock that rises abruptly from the floor: further
inwards they became interblended one with another, and at a distance
of fifteen feet from the entrance were barely visible. In and between
these the animal remains were found in the greatest abundance.
[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Plan of Hyæna-den at Wookey Hole.
Right lines = sections; dotted areas = bone-beds; shaded areas = ashes
and implements.]
While cutting our way inwards (Figs. 83 and 88), we found an angular
piece of flint, which had evidently been chipped by human agency, and
a water-worn fragment of a belemnite, which probably had been derived
from the neighbouring marlstone rocks. Bones and teeth of the woolly
rhinoceros, reindeer, stag, Irish elk, mammoth, hyæna, cave-bear,
lion, wolf, fox, and horse rewarded our labours; and frogs’ remains,
cemented together by stalagmite, were abundant at the mouth. The teeth
preponderated greatly over the bones, and the great bulk were those of
the horse. The hyæna-teeth also were very numerous, and in all stages
of growth, from the young unworn to the old tooth worn down to the
very gums. Those of the mammoth had belonged to a young animal, and
one had not been used at all. The hollow bones were completely smashed
and splintered, and scored with tooth-marks, while the solid carpal,
tarsal, and sesamoid bones were uninjured, as in the Kirkdale Cave. The
organic remains were in all stages of decay, some crumbling to dust
at the touch, while others were perfectly preserved and had lost very
little of their gelatine.
[Illustration: FIGS. 84, 85, 86, 87.--Four Views of Flint Implements
found in the Hyæna-den at Wookey Hole, near Wells.]
In 1860 we resumed our excavations; and, in addition to the above
remains, found satisfactory evidence of the former presence of man in
the cave. Our search was rewarded by one oval implement of white flint,
of rude workmanship (Figs. 84, 85, 86, 87), one chert arrow-head,
a roughly-chipped and a round flattened piece of chert, together
with various splinters of flint, which had apparently been knocked
off in the manufacture of some implement. Two rudely-fashioned bone
arrow-heads were also found, which unfortunately were subsequently lost
by the photographer to whom they were sent; they resembled in shape an
equilateral triangle with the angles at the base bevelled off. All were
found in and around the same spot, in contact with some hyæna-teeth,
between the dark bands of manganese, at a depth of four feet from the
roof, and at a distance of twelve feet from the present entrance (Fig.
83, _a_).
That there might be no mistake about the accuracy of the observations,
I examined every shovelful of débris as it was thrown out by the
workman; while the exact spot where they were excavating was watched by
my colleague. The figured implement was picked out of the undisturbed
matrix by him; the rest were found by me in the earth thrown out from
the same place.
The lines of peroxide of manganese must have been accumulated on the
old floors of the cave, because they were associated with numerous
splinters and gnawed animal remains; and there can be no doubt that the
latter were introduced by the hyænas. Those animals have a peculiar
habit, as Dr. Buckland proved by experiment, of gnawing similar bones
in precisely the same way; and a comparison of the relics of the
meals of the hyænas in the Zoological Gardens with those in the cave,
shows that the latter have passed between the jaws of a like animal
that once inhabited Somersetshire. Coprolites of the same animal were
very abundant, and in some places formed a greyish-white layer of
phosphate of lime. There were also other equally unmistakeable traces
of the animal in fragments of bone, polished by their tread, as in the
Kirkdale cave. It is, therefore, only reasonable to suppose that these
remains of animals were brought into the cave from time to time by
hyænas, and left on the floors. That they were not introduced by water
is proved by the preservation of the delicate processes and points of
bone, which would certainly have been broken _in transitu_. Since,
then, the implements, which, beyond doubt, had been fashioned by man,
were underneath one of these old floors, it was certain that man was
contemporary in the district with the hyæna and the animals on which it
preyed, and the fact that they were found only on one spot implies that
they were deposited by the hand of man. To suppose that a savage would
take the trouble to excavate a trench twenty-four feet long--for twelve
feet of the former mouth of the cave had been cut away--with miserable
implements, and consequently with great labour, and having excavated
it again to fill it up to the very roof, is little less than absurd.
Nor could such an operation take place in such a deposit, without the
stratification of the layers being destroyed. The absence of pottery
and human bones precludes the idea of the cave ever having been a place
of sepulture, such as Aurignac or Bruniquel. This discovery, therefore,
of itself stamps the contemporaneity of man with the extinct mammalia,
and following close on the similar discoveries in Brixham cave, to be
mentioned presently, puts the question beyond all doubt.
In April 1861 we resumed our excavations; and, as we made our way
inwards, found that the cave began to narrow, and ultimately to
bifurcate, one branch extending vertically upwards, while the other
appeared to extend almost horizontally to the right hand. As we reached
the middle constricted passage, the teeth became fewer, while the
stones were of larger size than any that we had hitherto discovered.
The great majority of the gnawed antlers of deer were found at this
part, also the posterior half of a cervine skull, the right upper jaw
of wolf, and, what is more remarkable, a stone with one of its surfaces
coated with a deposit apparently of stalagmite: this, however, was much
lighter than stalagmite, and not so good a conductor of heat; and,
on analysis, I found that it consisted of phosphate of lime, with a
little carbonate, and a very small portion of peroxide of manganese.
Doubtless the surface of the stone, covered with phosphate of lime,
formed part of the ancient floor of the cave, and hence was coated with
_album græcum_; while the lower part, being imbedded in the earth on
the floor, was not so coated. This deposit may, perhaps, explain the
absence of round balls of coprolite, which, assuming that the cave at
the time was more damp than that at Kirkdale, would be trodden down
on the floor by the hyænas, instead of presenting a rounded form. The
stone also itself exhibits tooth-marks underneath the coating of _album
græcum_, and probably was gnawed by the hyænas, like the antlers, for
amusement. This discovery proves that violent watery action had but
small share, if any, in filling the cave; for in that case the soft
covering would have been removed from the stone. Similar evidence is
offered by the wonderful preservation of some of the more delicate
fragments of bone, such as the palatine process of the maxilla of the
wolf.
The section made in cutting this passage presented irregular layers of
peroxide of manganese, full of bony splinters, and each more or less
covered by a layer of bones in various stages of decay. These layers
were absent from the upper portion of the passage. There were masses
of prisms of calc-spar scattered confusedly through the matrix. After
excavating the vertical branch as far as we dared (for the large stones
in it made the task dangerous), we were compelled to leave off, having
penetrated altogether only thirty-four feet from the entrance. No flint
implements rewarded our search this year. Teeth were far more numerous
than bones, probably because they are more durable as well as because
of their rejection by the hyænas. One jaw was bitten in two, and the
fragments found about a foot apart in the undisturbed matrix, just as
they had been dropped from the mouth of the hyæna.
In the spring of 1862 Mr. Parker, Mr. Willett, and myself resolved
to verify the association of articles of man’s handiwork along with
the extinct mammalia, by cleaning out the cave, which was courteously
placed at our disposal by the owner, Mr. Hodgekinson.
Our first task was to clear the contents out of the portion of the cave
nearest the mouth, or the antrum (Fig. 83, A), and as we excavated
onwards many traces of the presence of man were met with. A wide area
on the left-hand side (_b_), where the roof and floor of the cave
gradually met together, furnished innumerable fragments of charcoal,
and many flint implements associated with the remains of the horse,
rhinoceros, and hyæna. One fragment of bone in particular, belonging to
the rhinoceros, had been calcined, and its carbonized condition bore
unmistakeable testimony that it had been burnt while the animal juices
were present. There were many other bones also burnt, which indicated
the place where fires had been kindled, and food cooked. As we dug our
way forward we met with a third area (_c_), that furnished flint and
chert implements under the same conditions of deposit as that which
tempted us to carry on our excavations. Its relation to the old floors
of hyæna-occupation is shown by the dark lines over the area _c_ in
Fig. 88. At last the large open chamber (A) was cleared; it measured
about thirty feet wide by six feet high, and it extended forty feet
inwards. On the left there was a small upward-turning passage, very
nearly blocked up with a mass of stalagmite; at the farther end a
vertical fissure extended upwards (F), to the surface. This fissure
has subsequently been proved to extend downwards to the right, and
will doubtless furnish large quantities of animal remains to future
explorers.
[Illustration: FIG. 88.--Section through A of Fig. 83, showing contents
of Hyæna-den. _c_ = flint implements; thick lines above = old floors.]
[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Transverse Section through B of Fig. 83. 1 =
red earth; 2 = bone-bed; 3 = dark earth.]
The large chamber now turned abruptly to the left, and we gradually
worked our way into a small horizontal passage about four feet high.
Here there was an interval of from three to four inches between the
roof and contents, traversed by stalactites, which in some places
formed a smooth undulating drapery with stony tassels, and in others
tiny pillars extending down to the débris, and, as it were, propping
up the roof. These pedestals (see Fig. 15) gradually expanded into
round plates of stalagmite, which sometimes met and formed a continuous
crust. In some places an infiltration of carbonate of lime had
cemented organic remains, stones, and earth into a hard mass, which had
to be broken up with gunpowder before it could be removed out of the
cave. The excitement of extracting from these blocks their treasures
was of the very keenest, for we could not tell what a stroke of the
hammer would reveal. Sometimes an elephant’s tooth suddenly came to
light, at others a hyæna’s jaw, or a rhinoceros’ tooth, or the antler
of a reindeer, or the canine of a bear. The bones were so numerous that
they scarcely attracted attention. In one fragment of this breccia, now
in the Brighton Museum, are a tusk and carpal of mammoth, the right
ulna of the woolly rhinoceros, and an antler of reindeer. In a second,
two shoulder-blades and two haunch bones of the woolly rhinoceros, with
a coprolite and lower jaw of cave hyæna. As the men removed the large
blocks they were brought to the mouth of the cave to be broken up by
our smaller instruments. Presently the passage narrowed to about six
feet, and presented the following section (Fig. 89). On the floor of
the cave there was a layer of red earth two feet in thickness, and, as
usual, containing a few organic remains and many stones (Fig. 89, 1).
Upon this rested a most remarkable accumulation of bones, and teeth,
matted and compacted together, from three to four inches thick, and
extending horizontally from one side of the passage to the other (Fig.
89, 2). Next came a layer of dark red earth (Fig. 89, 3), loose and
friable, three to four inches thick, supporting in its surface a few
rounded stalagmites, and a few stalactitic pillars, that spanned the
interval of from three to four inches between it and the roof. This
bone-bed was about seven feet wide and fourteen feet long, affording,
therefore, a square area of ninety-eight feet (see dotted area B Fig.
83, and in Fig. 90). The enormous quantity of the remains of animals
present cannot fairly be estimated even by the large number preserved,
because most of the bones were as soft as wet mortar. The five hundred
and fifty specimens obtained must be looked upon merely as a small
fraction of the whole.
[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Longitudinal Section through B and C of Fig.
83, showing bone-beds. Dotted area = bone-bed.]
We presently passed beyond the bone-bed, and found that the passage
bifurcated (Fig. 83, C and D), the smaller branch going straight
forwards and gently upwards (Fig. 90), while the larger stretched
at right angles from it and passed gently downwards. In the former
there was a second bone-bed similar in every respect to that already
described, which continued undiminished in thickness until it rested
directly on the floor. It afforded a square area of about fifteen
feet. The passage was about sixteen inches high and three feet wide,
and gradually narrowed until at a distance of twelve feet from the
bifurcation a stalactite six inches long reached the floor and formed
a vertical bar, as if to forbid another ingress. When this had been
explored as far as we could crawl, the larger branch (Fig. 83, D,
and Fig. 91) engaged our attention, and we soon discovered a third
layer of bones of the same character as the others, and in the same
position, excepting that in some places it was in immediate contact
with the roof. In width it was six, in length fourteen, and in square
area eighty-four feet. From its further end to the termination of the
passage there was not the slightest vestige of bones or teeth, and a
stiff grey clay rested on a horizontal layer of sand on the floor. Here
the passage suddenly turned upwards until it became so small and barren
that it was not worth our while to pursue it farther. It doubtless
rises to the surface, like the large fissure opposite the entrance of
the cave shown in Fig. 88.[196]
The exploration was resumed the following year by Mr. Ayshford Sanford
and myself, and yielded vast quantities of fossil remains. We cleared
out the space marked 1863 in the plan, and discovered a flint implement
at the point marked _d_, in Fig. 83. My friend the late Mr. Wickham
Flower has also worked the cave, more particularly at the right-hand
side of the entrance chamber.
The ashes and implements were found in positions, near the mouth of
the cave, where man himself may have placed them (see Figs. 83, 88),
with the exception of the flint implement at _d_, and an ash of bone
imbedded in the earthy matrix between the canine tooth and a coprolite
of the hyæna, and cemented to a fragment of dolomitic conglomerate.
This was found far in the cave, either at the entrance of the passage
B, or in the middle of the passage D. The latter passage yielded the
only rolled flint without traces of man’s handiwork. The materials
out of which the implements were made were used pretty equally. All
those, like Fig. 84, were of flint; all those chipped into a rounded
form and flat-oval in section of chert from the Upper Greensand; while
the flakes consisted of both used indifferently. Besides these three
typical forms, which were most abundant, is a fourth, in form roughly
pyramidal, with a smooth and flat base, and a cutting edge all round.
Of these we found but two examples, both consisting of chert. In form
they are exactly similar to several hundreds found in a British village
at Stanlake, in Berkshire, and to those I discovered in a cemetery of
the same age at Yarnton, near Oxford. They strongly resemble a cast I
have of one found by M. Lartet in the cave of Aurignac. Were it not for
this similarity, I should look upon them as cores from which flakes
had been struck. The rest are mere splinters, irregular in form,
and probably made in the manufacture of the various flint and chert
implements. All the flint implements have been altered in colour and
structure, either by heat or, as is more probable, by some chemical
action. Without exception, the old surfaces present a waxy lustre (by
the absence of which forgeries are easily detected), the colour is of
a uniform milk-white, and the ordinary conchoidal fracture is replaced
by that of porcelain. Some are not harder than chalk. I have met with
weathered and calcined flints in Sussex in which similar changes are
observable, and in which the difference in the results of chemical
action and heat can hardly be detected. The chert implements, on the
other hand, show no traces of any such changes, but are similar in
colour and structure to the rocks from which they came--the Upper
Greensand of the Blackdown Hills.
All the fragments of calcined bone, with the exception of one already
mentioned, were found near the entrance (see Fig. 83, _b_), and in
a place more suitable for a fire than any other in the cave. I can
identify none of them as human. The coarse texture, the structure,
and the thickness of one indicate a fragment of a long bone of
the rhinoceros.[197] All resemble many splinters strewn about in
other parts of the cave, which are not calcined, but were evidently
introduced by the hyænas. The calcination may therefore be due to the
accident of their lying upon the surface at the time the fire was
kindled.
The remains obtained in 1862-3 from three to four thousand in number,
afford a vivid picture of the animal life of the time in Somerset. They
belong to the following animals, the numbers representing the jaws and
teeth only, and the implements:--
Man 35
Cave-Hyæna 467
Cave-Lion 15
Cave-Bear 27
Grizzly Bear 11
Brown Bear 11
Wolf 7
Fox 8
Mammoth 30
Woolly Rhinoceros 233
_Rhinoceros hemitœchus_ 2
Horse 401
The Great Urus 16
Bison 30
The Irish Elk 35
Reindeer 30
Red Deer 2
Lemming 1
The remains of these animals were so intermingled that they must have
been living together at the same time. They lie large with small, the
more with the less dense, and are not in the least degree sorted by
water. There is no evidence of the hyæna succeeding to the cave-bear,
or the reindeer to the urus, or that the bears came here to die, as in
some of the German caves, or that the herbivores fell, or were swept
into open fissures, and left their remains, as in the caves of Hutton
and Plymouth. On the contrary, the numerous jaws and teeth of hyæna,
and the marks of those teeth upon nearly every one of the specimens,
show that they alone introduced the remains that were found in such
abundance. And they preyed not merely upon horses, uri, and other
herbivores, but upon one another (Figs. 92, 93), and they even overcame
the cave-bear and lion in their full prime. Some of the bones of the
larger animals, and in particular a leg-bone of a gigantic urus, have
been broken short across and not bitten through--a circumstance which
points towards one of the causes of the vast accumulation of bones
in so small a cave. It is well known that wolves and hyænas at the
present day are in the habit of hunting in packs, and of forcing their
prey over precipices. The Wookey ravine is admirably situated for this
mode of hunting, and would not fail to destroy any animal forced into
it from the hill-side. It is therefore very probable that the hyænas
sometimes caught their prey in this manner. They would not have dared
to attack the bears and lions unless these had been disabled.
[Illustration: FIG. 91.--Longitudinal Section through D of Fig. 83.
Dotted area = bone-bed.]
But if all the remains of the animals were introduced by the hyænas,
they certainly in some cases do not occupy the exact position in which
they were left by those animals. One of the bone layers (Fig. 91) for
instance, actually touched the roof. This, indeed, has been used as
an argument in favour of their having been introduced by water, from
some unknown repository. But if this hypothesis be admitted, we are
landed in the following dilemma: either the introducing current of
water must have passed down the vertical passages, or upwards through
the horizontal mouth of the cave. In the former case the three bone
layers would not have been found in the narrow passages, but would
have been swept out into the wide chamber, where the force of the
hypothetical current must have abated. In the latter case the great
bulk of the remains would have been found in the chamber, and not in
the smaller passages. Moreover, the absence of marks of transport by
water, and especially of that sorting action which water as a conveying
agent always manifests, renders the view of their being so introduced
untenable. On the other hand, the horizontality of the layers of bone,
and the presence of sand and of red earth, imply that water was an
agent in re-arranging the bones and in introducing some of the contents
of the cave. The only solution of the difficulty that I can hazard is
the occurrence of floods from time to time, during the occupation of
the hyænas, similar to those which now take place in the caverns of the
neighbourhood. A few years ago, the outlet of the Axe in the great cave
was partially blocked up, and the water rose to a height of upwards of
sixteen feet, leaving a horizontal deposit of red earth of the same
nature as that in the hyæna-den. Now if we suppose that similar floods
were caused by an obstruction in the ravine below the hyæna-den, it
may have been flooded, just as the upper galleries of the great cave,
and the water laden with sediment might have elevated the layers of
matted bone, and some of the scattered remains on the surface, while
the current was insufficient to disturb the stones, or to affect to
any extent the deposits of former floods. The buoyancy of the organic
remains is not required to be greater, on this hypothesis, than in
that of their having been introduced by a current through the vertical
passages. Some of the wet bones taken straight from the cave were
sufficiently light to be carried down by the current of the Axe.
All these facts taken together enable us to form a clear idea of
the condition of things at the time the hyæna-den was inhabited.
The hyænas were the normal occupants of the cave, and thither they
brought their prey. We can realize those animals pursuing elephants and
rhinoceroses along the slopes of the Mendip, till they scared them into
the precipitous ravine, or watching until the strength of a disabled
bear or lion ebbed away sufficiently to allow of its being overcome by
their cowardly strength. Man appeared from time to time on the scene,
a miserable savage armed with bow and spear, unacquainted with metals,
but defended from the cold by coats of skin.[198] Sometimes he took
possession of the den and drove out the hyænas; for it is impossible
for both to have lived in the same cave at the same time. He kindled
his fires at the entrance, to cook his food, and to keep away the wild
animals; then he went away, and the hyænas came to their old abode.
While all this was taking place there were floods from time to time
until eventually the cave was completely blocked up with their deposits.
[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Gnawed jaw of Hyæna, from Hyæna-den at Wookey
(1/2). Dotted outline = portion eaten.]
The winter cold at the time must have been very severe to admit of the
presence of the reindeer and lemming.
_The district of the Mendip Hills at a higher level than now._
When we reflect on the vast quantities of the remains of the animals
buried in the caves of so limited an area as the Mendip Hills, it is
evident that there must have been abundance of food to have enabled
them to live in the district. The great marsh now extending from Wells
to the sea, and cutting off the Mendips from the fertile region to the
south, was probably a rich valley at a higher level than at present,
joining the westward plains now submerged under the Bristol Channel. An
elevation of from 100 to 300 feet would produce the physical conditions
necessary for the sustenance of the herbivora found in the caves both
in South Wales and Somersetshire.
_The characters of a Hyæna-den._
[Illustration: FIG. 93.--A and B, upper and lower jaws of Hyæna-whelp,
Wookey.]
The remains of the animals which have been eaten by the cave-hyæna,
may be recognized by the following characters. All are more or less
scored by teeth, and the only perfect bones are those which are solid,
or of very dense texture. The skulls are represented merely by the
harder portions. That of the woolly rhinoceros, for example, by the
hard pedestal which supports the anterior horn (see Fig. 30). Several
of these pedestals occurred in the Wookey hyæna-den. The lower jaws
also have lost their angle and coronoid process, and are gnawed to
the pattern of the shaded portion of Fig. 92, the less succulent part
bearing the teeth being rejected. This holds good of the jaws of all
the animals so persistently, that out of more than two hundred from
Wookey there was only one exception. The jaw of the glutton (Fig. 82),
from Plas Heaton, is also gnawed to the same shape, and one of those
of the cave-bear from the cavern of Lherm, considered by M. Garrigou
to have been fashioned by the hand of man into an implement, seems to
me, after a careful comparison in company with Dr. Falconer, referable
solely to the gnawing of the hyæna. In Fig. 92, the lower jaw of an
adult hyæna is represented, and in Fig. 93 (1) the upper and lower
jaws of a hyæna-whelp. In the latter the teeth marks _a_ and _b_ are
remarkably distinct.[199]
[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Left Thigh-bone of Woolly Rhinoceros gnawed by
Hyænas; Shaded parts left. (Wookey Hole.)]
The marrow-containing bones are also universally splintered away,
until either the articular ends alone are left, as in Fig. 80, or in
some cases, as in that of the femur of woolly rhinoceros (Fig. 94),
the dense central portion bearing the third trochanter is preserved.
This fragment is extremely abundant in nearly all the hyæna-caves in
this country. From the invariable habit of the hyæna leaving the bones
of its prey in fragments of this kind, their dens are characterized
by the absence of perfect long-bones and skulls, and consequently,
when these occur in a cave it is certain proof that it was not
occupied by these animals. In a great many caves, however, the gnawed
fragments are associated with the perfect bones, as, for example, at
Banwell, a circumstance that may be accounted for by the untouched
carcases and the gnawed fragments being swept in from the surface by a
stream falling into a swallow-hole. In all hyæna-dens also are large
quantities of _album græcum_, as well as fragments of bone more or less
polished by the friction of the hyæna’s feet.
_The Caves of Devonshire._
The ossiferous caves on the south coast of Devonshire, explored during
the last fifty years, are by far the most important in this country,
since they were the first which were scientifically examined, and
the first which established the co-existence of man with the extinct
mammalia.
We owe the full details of their history to the labours of the
distinguished cave-hunter Mr. Pengelly, F.R.S.,[200] whose writings are
freely used in the following account.
_The Oreston Caves._
The first intimation of the presence of fossil bones in the district
was furnished by Mr. Whidbey, the engineer in charge of the
construction of the Plymouth breakwater, who discovered numerous
bones and teeth, imbedded in clayey loam, in some cavernous fissures
at Oreston, which were brought before the Royal Society by Sir
Everard Home in 1817. Thus Dr. Buckland’s researches in Kirkdale were
anticipated by four years. From time to time, since that date, several
other fissures and caves close by have furnished remains of rhinoceros,
mammoth, hyæna, lion, and other animals. Among the bones and teeth
originally sent up by Mr. Whidbey are several which were identified by
Prof. Busk,[201] as belonging to the _Rhinoceros megarhinus_, a species
that is vastly abundant in the pleiocene strata of northern Italy and
is also represented in the early pleistocene forest-bed of Norfolk and
Suffolk, and in the lower brickearths of the valley of the Thames at
Grays and Crayford. This is the only case on record of the discovery of
the animal in a cavern deposit.
The cavernous fissures in the neighbourhood of Yealmpton,[202] about
seven miles east-south-east from Plymouth, explored by Mr. Bellamy and
Colonel Mudge, R.A., F.R.S. in 1835-6, contained the remains of the
hyæna and rhinoceros, and the other animals more usually associated
with them. They were probably filled, as in the case of Oreston, mainly
by the streams which introduced the pebbles. They may, however, from
time to time have been inhabited by the hyænas, although the presence
of three skulls of that animal forbids the supposition that they
dragged in all the fossil bones.
_The Caves at Brixham._
The series of fissures accidentally discovered in 1858, in quarrying
the rock which overlooks the little fishing town of Brixham, known as
the Windmill cave, was selected by the late Dr. Falconer,[203] as a
spot in which thorough investigation would be likely to decide the then
doubtful question of the co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia.
Kent’s Hole had been disturbed by repeated diggings, and the results
might be viewed with suspicion. He, therefore, urged the importance of
a systematic examination of this virgin cave with such effect, that it
was undertaken by the Royal and Geological Societies, and a committee
was appointed, comprising, amongst others, Dr. Falconer, Prof. Ramsay,
Mr. Prestwich, Sir Charles Lyell, Prof. Owen, Mr. Godwin-Austen, and
Mr. Pengelly. To the superintendence of the last is mainly due the
minute care with which the exploration was conducted. The remains have
been identified by Dr. Falconer and Prof. Busk. The work was commenced
in July 1858, and completed in the summer of 1859.[204]
The cave consists of three principal galleries, with diverging
passages, running in the direction of the joints from north to south,
and from east to west, communicating with the surface at four points.
The following is the general section (Fig. 95) of the deposits in
descending order.
(A.) On the floor was a layer of stalagmite, varying from a few inches
to upwards of a foot in thickness, and containing only twenty-five
bones, among which were the humerus of a bear, and the antler of a
reindeer.
[Illustration: FIG. 95.--Diagram of Deposits in Brixham Cave.
(Pengelly.)]
(B.) Reddish cave-earth with fragments and blocks of limestone, and
of stalagmite, generally averaging from two to four feet. In it 1,102
bones were discovered irregularly scattered through its mass, and
belonging to mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, lion, cave, grizzly, and brown
bears, reindeer, and others. They varied in state of preservation, and
some were scored and marked by teeth. Associated with these, thirty-six
rude flint implements were met with, of indisputable human workmanship,
and of the same general order as those figured by the Rev. J. MacEnery
from Kent’s Hole. Among them was one lanceolate implement with rounded
point and unworked butt end, considered by Mr. John Evans, F.R.S.,
of the type of those usually found in the valley gravels.[205] There
was, therefore, the most conclusive evidence that man inhabited the
neighbourhood, either before or during the time of the accumulation of
B, and before those physical changes took place by which the red silt
ceased to be deposited, or the stalagmite above began to be formed.
(C.) At the bottom of the cave-earth was a deposit of gravel,
principally of rounded pebbles and devoid of fossils.
The early history of the cave, as shown by these deposits, is given
by Mr. Prestwich, in the report presented to the Royal Society, as
follows:--
“Looking at all the phenomena of Brixham cave, the conclusion your
reporter has arrived at is, that the formation of the cave commenced
and was carried on simultaneously with the excavation of the valley;
that the small streams flowing down the upper tributary branches of
the valley entered the western openings of the cave and, traversing
the fissures in the limestone, escaped by lower openings in the chief
valley, just as the Grotto d’Arcy was formed by an overflow from the
cave taking a short cut through the limestone hills, round which the
river winds. These tributary streams brought in the shingle bed (Fig.
95, C), which fills the bottom of the fissure. It was only during
occasional droughts, when the streams were dry, that the cave seems
to have been frequented by animals, their remains being very scarce
in that bed, while indications of man are comparatively numerous. As
the excavation of the valley proceeded, the level of the stream was
lowered and became more restricted to the valley-channel. The cave
consequently became drier, and was more resorted to by predatory
animals, who carried in their prey to devour, and was less frequented
by man. At the same time with the periodical floods, which there is
every reason to believe, from other investigations, were so great
during the quaternary period, the cave would long continue to be
subject to inundations, the muddy waters of which deposited the silt
forming the cave-earth, burying progressively the bones left from
season to season by succeeding generations of beasts of prey. By the
repetition at distant intervals of these inundations, and by the
accumulation during the intervening periods of fresh crops of bones,
the bone-bearing cave-earth, B, was gradually formed. During this time
the occasional visits of man are indicated by the rare occurrence of
a flint implement, lost, probably, as he groped his way through the
dark passages of the cave. As the valley became deeper, and as with the
change of climate at the close of the (pleistocene) quaternary period
the floods became less, so did the cave become drier and more resorted
to by animals. At last it seems to have become a place for permanent
resort for bears; their remains in all stages of growth, including
even sucking cubs, were met with in the upper part of the cave-earth,
in greater numbers than were the bones of any other animals. These
animals resorted especially to the darker and more secluded flint-knife
gallery, where 221 out of 366 of their determinable bones were found,
whereas only twenty-six were met with in the reindeer gallery.
“Finally, as the cave became out of the reach of the flood waters, the
drippings from the roof, which up to this period had, with the single
exception before mentioned, been lost in the accumulating cave-earth,
or deposited in thin calcareous incrustations on the exposed bones,
now commenced that deposit of stalagmite which sealed up and preserved
undisturbed the shingle and cave-earth deposited under former and
different conditions. The cave, however, still continued to be
the occasional resort of beasts of prey; for sparse remains of the
reindeer, together with those of the bear and rhinoceros, were found in
the stalagmite floor. After a time the falling in of the roof at places
(and any earthquake movement may have detached blocks from it), and the
external surface weathering, stopped up some parts of the cave, and
closed its entrances with an accumulation of débris. From that time it
ceased to be accessible, except to the smaller rodents and burrowing
animals, and so remained unused and untrodden until its recent
discovery and exploration.”[206]
Mr. Pengelly points out[207] an episode in the history of the cave,
between the formation and the filling up with its present contents,
which is of considerable importance, viewed in relation to the deposits
in Kent’s Hole. Over the empty space in D, of Fig. 95, is an ancient
stalagmite floor, E, constituting the present ceiling, and shutting off
D from the true roof above, E. At the time this was formed, the cave
must have been filled up to that level with débris, fragments of which
are set in the inferior portion of the calcareous sheet. Subsequently,
and before the present contents, A and B, were introduced, the whole
of this material has been swept away, probably by an unusual flood
similar to that alluded to in the second chapter in the Clapham cave.
The pieces of stalagmite in the cave-earth are, probably, some of
the relics of the older floor. This filling up, re-excavating, and
re-filling with its present contents, are phenomena which considerably
complicate the problems offered not merely by Brixham cave, but also
by those of Kent’s Hole.
Two other caverns in the neighbourhood of Brixham, the “Ash Hole” and
“Bench,” have also yielded the remains of the reindeer, hyæna, and
several other pleistocene species, and are fully described by Mr.
Pengelly, in his essays contributed to the Devonshire Association.[208]
_Kent’s Hole._
The celebrated cave of Kent’s Hole,[209] known from time immemorial,
was first found to contain fossil bones by Mr. Northmore, and Sir
W. C. Trevelyan in 1824, and was subsequently explored by the Rev. J.
MacEnery in the five following years, during which he met with flint
implements in association with the extinct animals in the undisturbed
strata, and obtained the teeth of the sabre-toothed feline, named by
Prof. Owen _Machairodus latidens_, which has never before or since
been discovered in any other cavern in Britain. His manuscripts
unfortunately were not used until they passed into the hands of Mr.
Vivian, of Torquay, who published an abstract in 1859. Subsequently
they were published in full by Mr. Pengelly, in 1869. The discovery of
the flint implements, verified by Mr. Godwin Austen in 1840, and six
years later also by a committee of the Torquay Natural History Society,
was received with incredulity by the scientific world, until the result
of the exploration of the Brixham cave had placed the fact of the
co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia beyond all doubt. In
1864 a committee[210] was appointed by the British Association for the
carrying on the investigation, which from that time to the present has
been conducted under the careful supervision of Mr. Pengelly.
The cave consists of two parallel series of chambers and galleries,
an eastern and a western, which penetrate the low cliff of Devonian
limestone in the direction of the joints, with a northern and southern
entrance, very nearly at the same level, “about fifty feet apart, from
180 to 190 feet above the level of mean tide, and about seventy feet
above the bottom of the valley immediately adjacent.” The largest
chamber of the eastern series is sixty-two feet from east to west, and
fifty-three from north to south. The extent of the cave has not yet
been ascertained.
The contents, examined with the minutest care (on Mr. Pengelly’s
method, see Appendix I.), were found to be arranged in the following
order.
(A.) The surface was composed of dark earth varying in thickness from
a few inches to a foot, on which rested large blocks of limestone,
fallen from the roof. It contained mediæval remains, Roman pottery,
and combs fashioned out of bone, similar to those discovered in the
Victoria and Dowkerbottom caves in Yorkshire, which prove that the cave
was frequented during the historic period. A barbed iron spear-head,
a bronze spear-head, other bronze articles, and polished stone celts,
establish the fact that it was also used during the iron, bronze,
and neolithic ages. This stratum contained the broken bones of the
short-horn (_Bos longifrons_), goat, and horse, large quantities of
charcoal, and was to a great extent a refuse-heap like that in the
Victoria cave.
[Illustration: FIG. 96.--Lanceolate Implement from Kent’s Hole (1/1).
(Evans.)[211]]
[Illustration: FIG. 97.--Oval Implement from Kent’s Hole (1/1) (Evans.)]
(B.) Below this was a stalagmite floor, varying in thickness from one
to three feet, covering
(C.) The red earth, with stones, bones of the extinct animals, and
flint implements, associated together in the greatest confusion, as
well as large lumps of stalagmite and of breccia, which had been torn
out of a pre-existent floor. In the “vestibule,” near one of the
entrances, a black layer beneath the stalagmite, composed, to a great
extent, of charcoal, indicated the position of the fire-places, and
contained a vast number of rude unpolished palæolithic implements.
There were also local stalagmitic bands. The flint implements were
met with at various depths, and consist of three distinct types: the
lanceolate, Fig. 96, the oval, with edge carefully chipped for cutting,
Fig. 97, and the flake (see Fig. 106). Besides these a few implements
have been discovered of the same shape as those found in the gravel
beds; in outline and section roughly triangular, and tapering to a
point from a blunt base, which was probably intended to be held in the
hand.[212] Several articles of bone and antler were also met with,
comprising an awl, or piercer, a needle with the eye large enough to
admit small packthread, and three harpoon-heads, one of which is barbed
on both sides (Fig. 98), the others being merely barbed on one side
(Fig. 99). A rounded pebble of coarse red sandstone, battered into a
cheese-like form, by being used as a hammer (Fig. 100), was also found.
All these articles bring the palæolithic inhabitants of Kent’s Hole
into relation with those of the caves and rock-shelters of the south
of France, to be described in the next chapter.
[Illustration: FIG. 98.--Harpoon from Kent’s Hole (1/1). (Evans.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 99.--Harpoon-head from Kent’s Hole (1/1). (Evans.)]
(D.) The cave-earth rested on a compact, dark red breccia composed of
angular fragments of limestone and pebbles of sandstone embedded in a
sandy calcareous paste, identical in constitution with the fragments
of the older breccia discovered in the cave-earth. It has furnished
bones of bears, and four flint implements. The cave-earth, C, and the
breccia, E, seem to stand to one another in an inverse ratio as regards
thickness: where the former was thin, the latter was sometimes as much
as twelve feet thick. From this relation, as well as from the imbedded
fragments of the latter, it may be concluded that the former is the
more modern, and that in the interval between their accumulation the
latter had been, to a considerable extent, broken up.
[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Hammer-stone (1/2). (Evans.)]
There is very good reason for the belief, that before any of the
present cave-earth was introduced, Kent’s Hole had been filled nearly
to the roof by an older cave accumulation, now represented by the
undisturbed breccia and the included fragments. In a portion of the
cave termed the “gallery,” there is a sheet of stalagmite, extending
overhead from wall to wall, and constituting a ceiling that reaches
from wall to wall, without further support than that offered by its
own cohesion. Above it, in the limestone rock, there is a considerable
alcove. This branch of the cavern, therefore, is divided into three
stories or flats, that below the floor occupied with cave-earth, that
between the floor and the ceiling entirely unoccupied, and that above
the ceiling also without a deposit of any kind. For such a sheet of
stalagmite to have been formed it is absolutely necessary for the cave
to have been filled up to its level with materials of some kind, just
as it is necessary for the formation of a film of ice that it should be
crystallized from the surface of water. We may, therefore, infer that
Kent’s Hole, like Brixham, was originally filled up to the level of the
ceiling (see Fig. 95, E), then that the contents were swept out, with
the exception of the breccia, and lastly, that the present cave-earth
was introduced. The occurrence of the remains of bear, and of flint
implements, in this breccia also proves that man and bears were living
in the district, while it was being accumulated, probably by the action
of the floods to which, from time to time, the cave was subjected. All
the flint implements in the breccia are of the ruder and larger form
which is presented by those from the pleistocene deposits of the Somme,
Seine, and the rivers of the south and east of England.
While engaged in the identification of the mammals in 1869, with
Mr. W. A. Sanford, I detected splinters of bears’ canines, from the
cave-earth, remarkable for their density, crystalline structure, and
semi-conchoidal fracture, which were in the same mineral state as those
from the older breccia. One of these had been fashioned into a flake
after its mineralization, and presented an edge chipped by use. The
tooth from which it was struck was, probably, imbedded and mineralized
in the older breccia, then washed out of it, and afterwards chosen for
the manufacture of an implement. It was already fossil and altered in
structure in the palæolithic age.
_The probable Age of the Machairodus of Kent’s Hole._
The most remarkable animal discovered in the cave, by the Rev. J.
MacEnery, is the _Machairodus latidens_,[213] or large lion-like
animal, armed with double-edged canines, in shape like the blade of a
sabre, and with two serrated edges. Five canines and two incisors were
dug out of the cave-earth, C, in the Wolf’s Passage, along with vast
quantities of bones and teeth of the mammoth, rhinoceros, Irish elk,
horse, and hyæna. One of the canines is represented in Figs. 101, 102,
which are taken from one of the original plates drawn for Dr. Buckland,
and now in the Museum of the Torquay Natural History Society. The two
incisors, Figs. 103, 104, 105, are also characterised by their serrated
edges. A third was discovered by the exploration committee in the same
spot, in 1872, scarcely to be distinguished from that in Figs. 103,
104, which finally dispelled the scepticism of some eminent naturalists
as to whether any of these teeth had been obtained in the cave by the
Rev. J. MacEnery.
[Illustration: FIGS. 101, 102.--Upper Canine of Machairodus, Kent’s
Hole (1/1). (MacEnery.)]
The _Machairodus latidens_ has been found in pleistocene strata in two
localities in France: in a deposit of diluvium, near Puy, by M. Aymard,
and in the cavern of Baume in the Jura, considered by M. Lartet to
be of preglacial age.[214] In the latter it was associated with the
horse, ox, wild-boar, elephant, a non-tichorine species of rhinoceros,
the cave-bear, and the spotted hyæna. In the autumn of 1873, I met
with proof that the animal also lived in France in the pleiocene
period. M. Lortet, the Director of the Museum of Natural History, at
Lyons, called my attention to a canine, in the Palais des Beaux Arts,
which coincides exactly in all its dimensions with one of those from
Kent’s Hole. It was found at Chagny (Saône et Loire) near Dijon, along
with _Mastodon arvernensis_, the Etruscan or megarhine species of
rhinoceros, horse, beaver and hyæna, somewhat resembling that from
the Crag (_Hyæna antiqua_) of Suffolk described by Mr. Lankester. The
species, therefore, is pleiocene, and it belongs to a genus which is
widely distributed in the meiocene strata of Europe and North America,
as well as in the pleiocene of Europe.
To what era in the complicated history of Kent’s Hole is this animal
to be assigned? The more ancient, or the more modern? The evidence on
this point is, to a certain extent, contradictory. On the one hand it
is a pleiocene species, belonging to a group of animals that inhabited
Europe before the lowering of the temperature caused the invasion
of the arctic mammalia from the north and the east: it is moreover
of a distinctly southern type. In the teeth marks on the incisors,
Figs. 103, 104, 105, as well as on the canines, we have unmistakeable
traces of the presence of the hyæna; and since the spotted hyæna
abounds in the cave, to its teeth the marks in question may probably
be referred. It seems, therefore, probable that the animal inhabited
Devonshire during an early stage of the pleistocene period, before
the arctic invaders had taken full possession of the valley of the
English Channel, and of the low grounds which now lie within the
100-fathom line off the Atlantic shore of Western France. There must
necessarily have been a swinging to and fro of animal life over the
great, fertile low-lying region, which is now submerged (see Map,
Fig. 126); and before the temperature of France had been sufficiently
lowered to exterminate or drive out the southern forms, it is most
natural to suppose that in warm seasons some of the southern mammalia
would find their way northwards, and especially a formidable carnivore
such as the machairodus. The extreme rarity of its remains forbids
the hypothesis that it was a regular inhabitant of Britain during the
pleistocene age.
[Illustration: FIGS. 103, 104, 105.--Incisors of Machairodus, Kent’s
Hole (1/1). (MacEnery.)[215]]
On the other hand, the recent discovery of a second incisor in the
uppermost portion of the cave-earth, in July 1872, in the same
condition as the remains usually found, and associated with the bones
and teeth of hyæna, horse, and bear, is considered by Sir Charles Lyell
and Mr. Pengelly proof of the animal having lived during the deposition
of the later cave-earth, or in the later stage of the pleistocene.
The condition of a bone, however, is a very fallacious guide to its
antiquity, and although the fragments of the older contents of the cave
are in a different mineral state, it is improbable that the ossiferous
contents of so large a cave should have been mineralized exactly in
the same way. Nor is an appeal to its perfect state conclusive, since
several teeth of bear, which I have examined from the breccia, are
equally perfect.
The view of the high antiquity of machairodus in Kent’s Hole derives
support from the discovery of _Rhinoceros megarhinus_ at Oreston, a
species which is very abundant in the Italian pleiocene strata, and
not uncommon in those of France,--a species with its headquarters in
the south, but ranging as far north as Norfolk in the early stage of
the pleistocene age, represented by the forest bed of Cromer, and that
lived in the valley of the Thames, while the gravel-beds of Crayford
and Grays Thurrock were being deposited by the ancient river. The
occurrence of either of these animals in a cave is exceptional, and
the presence of both in caves on the edge of the great plain extending
southwards from the present coastline of Devon, seems to me to imply
that both were open during the early stage of the pleistocene, while
the pleiocene mammalia were retreating before the southward advance
of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, spotted hyæna, reindeer, and their
congeners, at a time anterior to the lowering of the temperature that
culminated in the glacial period. For these reasons it seems to me
probable that the machairodus belongs to an early rather than a late
stage in the history of Kent’s Hole.
There is an important point of resemblance between the mode of the
occurrence of the machairodus in Kent’s Hole, and of the megarhine
rhinoceros at Oreston. The remains of both were met with only _in
one spot_, and were not scattered through the chambers and passages.
It may have happened that in the physical changes which those caves
have undergone, both were preserved in a fissure like that described
in the Uphill cave (p. 294), and that subsequently they dropped
down and became imbedded in a newer deposit. In fixing the age of
strata in caves it seems to me that the zoological evidence is of far
greater weight than that of mere position, which may be the result of
accidental circumstances.
_The Caves of Ireland._
The caves of Ireland would probably afford as rich a fauna as those
of Britain, had they been explored with equal care. In one at
Shandon, near Dungarvan, Waterford, remains of the brown bear (_U.
arctos_) reindeer, horse, and mammoth were discovered in 1859, by Mr.
Brenan.[216] The first of these animals became extinct in Ireland
before the historic period, while it survived in Britain at least as
late as the Roman occupation.
The cave-bear is also recorded by Dr. Carte,[217] from the same place,
but the thigh bone assigned to it seems to me to belong to the brown,
or common species. The mammoth, so abundant in Britain, has only been
discovered in two other localities in Ireland, at Whitechurch near
Dungarvan, and at Magherry near Belturbet.[218]
The range of these animals over Great Britain and Ireland in the
pleistocene age enables us to realize the ancient physical geography,
which will be treated in the next and following chapters as part of the
general question of the physical condition of north-western Europe at
that time.