Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/56

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48
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

of reindeer were found. In another (Long Hole) the fossil remains included Elephas antiquus and E. primigenius, two species of rhinoceros, bear, lion, hyæna, bison and rein- deer, associated with well-formed flint flakes. Similar discoveries were made in the famous Hyæna Den of Wookey Hole, where the fossil remains of the animals of the period were counted in hundreds, the most numerous being hyæna, horse, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, mammoth and Irish elk.

No fossil remains of man have hitherto been found in caves frequented by Palæolithic races in South Britain, with the exception of a female skeleton in the Paviland cave, described by Dr. Buckland, a molar tooth in the cave of Pont Newydd in Wales, and the hitherto overlooked jaw from Kent's Cavern. In France and other parts of the Continent the remains of fossil cave-men have been frequently met with.

The most rational explanation that can now be given for the presence of the bones of extinct animals in such large numbers on these rocky shores of the west of England and Wales, is that the English Channel was then mostly a well-watered plain, sufficiently rich in vegetation to attract herds of herbivorous animals, and which therefore soon became the happy hunting-ground for the great extinct carnivores. Except in Kent's Cavern, there is no decided evidence that man was a frequent visitor of the caves during the inter-glacial warm period which followed that