Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/113

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CAVE RESEARCHES (BRITAIN)
63

that, if present, such objects might have been passed over in ignorance of their nature. Since then, however, the presence of Palæolithic man in several of the caves of North and South Wales has been proved by the finding of well-formed flint implements, associated with the osseous remains of extinct animals. Professor Boyd Dawkins informs us that in the cave of Pont Newydd, near St Asaph, in North Wales, "a human molar tooth has been found, as well as a quartzite implement, and rude splinters and chips of quartzite, of the same type as those of the red sand in the caves of Creswell. The pebbles of which these are made have been obtained from the glacial deposits in the neighbourhood. We may therefore conclude with Professor Hughes that the Palæolithic hunter was here after the district was forsaken by the glaciers and the sea, or in other words in post-glacial times, as in the parallel case offered by the river-deposits of Bedford and Hoxne. It must also be remarked that the leptorhine rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, as well as the straight-tusked elephant (E. antiquus, bear, bison, reindeer, and horse, are found with the quartzite implements in the Pont Newydd cave, which may therefore be classified with those of Yorkshire and the lower strata in Mother Grundy's Parlour." (Early Man, p. 192.)

The Paviland Skeleton.

The cave of Goat's Hole (Gower Peninsula), explored by Dr Buckland in 1823, opens by a wide mouth in face of a cliff 100 feet high, and from 30 to 40 feet above sea-level, and is accessible only at low-water mark. The body of the cave measures 60 feet in length, 20 feet in breadth, and from 25 to 30 feet in height. An irregular chimney-like aperture ascends from the roof and terminates in face of the perpendicular cliff, but too small for the entire carcase of an elephant to have passed down through it. The floor, according to Dr Buckland, was covered with "a mass of diluvial loam of a reddish yellow colour, abundantly mixed with angular fragments of limestone and broken calcareous spar, and interspersed with recent sea-shells, and with teeth and bones of the following animals, viz., elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyæna, wolf, fox, horse, ox, deer of two or three species, water-rats, sheep, birds, and man. I