Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/55

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DISCOVERIES IN BRITAIN
47

out a series of investigations in the Cresswell caves, Derbyshire, which showed that they were the abodes of a colony of Palæolithic races of the Magdalénien epoch. Among the industrial remains which these people left behind them were the following objects—well-formed flint flakes, borers and engravers; chisels, awls and a neatly-made needle of bone; a flat piece of bone ornamented with the incised head of a horse, and another oval piece with a serrated edge. These relics are quite sufficient to prove that the inhabitants of the Cresswell caves were contemporary with, and belonged to, the same race as the later Palæolithic men of Kent's Cavern. It may, however, be noted that in one or two caves a lower stratum of cave-earth contained osseous remains of the hyæna, bison, hippopotamus and the small-nosed rhinoceros—all representatives of a warm climate. But along with them there were no remains of man or his works.

According to Dr. Buckland the Hyæna Den of Kirkdale contained bones of the hyæna, representing some 300 individuals, and next in point of numbers came those of the ox and deer, but there was no evidence of the presence of man at any time in this cave.

Several caves in the south-west of England and Wales yielded bones of nearly all the extinct mammalia associated with flint implements. In Bosco's Den, one of the Gower Peninsula caves, no less than 750 shed antlers