shall, of course, confine myself to those caverns in which some traces of man or his works have been discovered in connection with the earlier fauna, of which mention has already been made.
First on the list of systematic explorers stands the name of the late Dr. Buckland, subsequently Dean of Westminster, who, upwards of seventy years ago, conducted excavations in most of the ossiferous caves of Britain at that time known; and also made more than one expedition into Germany, with a view of studying analogous caverns in that country. His "Reliquiæ Diluvianæ," published in 1823, and containing, in part, matter already printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the previous year, presents an interesting account of his researches. Unfortunately, however, he sought in the phenomena of the caves and the old alluvia evidence of a universal deluge, and not any record of an extended chapter in the world's history; and, though at a later period of his life he renounced these views, yet the effect of his regarding all human relics as post-diluvial, was to give a bias to geological opinion so strongly against the belief in their true association with the remains of the extinct mammals, as to cause some careful inquirers almost to doubt the correctness of their own observations.
Still, so far as the instances cited in the "Reliquiæ Diluvianæ" go, his judgment appears to have been in the main correct. The only case in which there can be much doubt is that of the so-called "red woman of Paviland;" for, as Prof. Boyd Dawkins[1] has pointed out, there appears to have been in this, as in some other caves, a mixture of remains belonging to two distinct periods. This is proved by the presence of remains of sheep, underneath the bones of elephants and other Pleistocene mammals, as well as by the disturbed state of the cave-earth, so that the skeleton, though of very early date, may not impossibly belong to the Neolithic Period. The discoveries in the caves near Mentone may, however, eventually throw more light upon the question.
In size the skeleton equalled that of the largest male in the Oxford Museum,[2] so that the name of "red woman" appears misplaced. The most remarkable feature in the case is that with the skeleton were found a number of nearly cylindrical rods and fragments of rings of ivory, which appear to have been made from some of the elephant tusks in the cave. If this were so,
