Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/377

the edges were delicately worked with a small tool. A bone needle was also met with, and bone awls, and two harpoons of reindeer antler, the one barbed on one side and the other on both.

Rude, coarse pottery has also been found, but only quite near the surface, and this belongs to a later period.

There are other caves in the same formation, at Anstis and at Brixham, that have rendered good results when explored.

The two deposits are separated from each other by a sheet of crystalline stalagmite, in some places nearly twelve feet thick, formed after the breccia was deposited, and before the cave-earth was introduced. After the stalagmite had been formed, it was broken up by some unknown natural agency, and much of it, along with some of the breccia, was carried out by water from the cave, before the deposition of the cave-earth began.

"From these observations it is evident that the River-drift men inhabited the caves of Devonshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire in an early stage of the history of caverns, and that after an interval, to be measured in Kent's Hole by the above-mentioned physical changes, the Cavemen (those of the Second Period) found shelter in the same places. The former also followed the chase in the valley of the Elwy and the vale of Clwydd in North Wales, and the latter found ample food in the numerous reindeer, horses, and bisons then wandering over the plains extending from the Mcndip Hills to the Quantocks, and the low, fertile tract now covered by the estuary of the Severn and the Irish Sea. When all these facts are taken into consideration, it is difficult to escape Mr. Pengelly's