Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/391

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THE OSSIFEROUS CAVERNS OF DEVONSHIRE.
365

Asinus fossilis, Bison minor, Bos longifrons, and, according to the late Mr. Bellamy, Mammoth and Hippopotamus (see Nat. Hist, of S. Devon, 1839, p. 82). With regard to Hippopotamus, I can only say that I have never met with satisfactory evidence of its occurrence in Devonshire; but the Mammoth was certainly found at Oreston in 1858; and, unless I am greatly in error, remains of Rhinoceros tichorhinus were also met with there, and lodged by me in the British Museum. It may be added that the skull and other relics of a Hog were exhumed on that occasion, and now belong to my collection. There was nothing to suggest that the cavern had been the home of the Hyæna; and whilst I fully accept Dr. Buckland's opinion that animals had fallen into the open fissures and there perished, and that the remains had subsequently been washed thence into the lower vaultings" (Reliq. Dil., 2nd ed. 1834, p. 78), I venture to add that some of the animals may have retired thither to die; a few may have been dragged or pursued there by beasts of prey; whilst rains, such as are not quite unknown in Devonshire in the present day, probably washed in some of the bones of such as died near at hand on the adjacent plateau. Nothing appears to have been met with suggestive of human visits.

Kent's Hole.—About a mile due east from Torquay Harbour and half a mile north from Torbay there is a small wooded limestone hill, the eastern side of which is, for the uppermost 30 feet, a vertical cliff, having at its base, and 54 feet apart, two apertures leading into one and the same vast cavity in the interior of the hill, and known as Kent's Hole or Cavern. These openings are about 200 feet above mean sea-level, and from them the hill slopes rapidly to the valley at its foot, at a level of from 60 to 70 feet below. There seems to be neither record nor tradition of the discovery of the cavern. Richardson, in the 8th edition of 'A Tour through the Island of Great Britain,' published in 1778, speaks of it as "perhaps the greatest natural curiosity" of the county; its name occurs on a map dated 1769; it is mentioned in a lease 1659; visitors cut their names and dates on the stalagmite from 1571 down to the present century; judging from numerous objects found on the floor, it was visited by man through mediæval back to pre-Roman limes; and, unless the facts exhumed by explorers have been misinterpreted, it was a human home during the era of the Mammoth and his contemporaries. In 1824 Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, was led to make a few diggings in the cavern, and was the first to