find fossil bones there. He was soon followed by Mr. (now Sir) W.C. Trevelyan, who not only found bones, but had a plate of them engraved. In 1825, the Rev. J. MacEnery, an Irish Roman Catholic priest residing in the family of Mr. Gary, of Tor Abbey, Torquay, first visited the cavern, when he, too, found teeth and bones, of which he published a plate. Soon after, he made another visit, accompanied by Dr. Buckland, when he had the good fortune to discover a flint implement—the first instance, he tells us, of such a relic being noticed in any cavern (see Trans. Devon Assoc, iii. p. 441). Before the close of 1825 he commenced a series of more or less systematic diggings, and continued them until, and perhaps after, the summer of 1829 (ibid. p. 295). Preparations appear to have been made to publish the results of his labours; a prospectus was issued, numerous plates were lithographed, it was generally believed that the MS. was almost ready, and the only thing needed was a list of subscribers sufficient to justify publication, when, alas! on February 18, 1841, before the printer had received any "copy," before even the world of science had accepted his anthropological discoveries—before the value of his labours was known to more than a very few—Mr. MacEnery died at Torquay. After his decease his MS. could not be discovered, and its loss was duly deplored. Nevertheless, it was found after several years, and, having undergone varieties of fortune, became the property of Mr. Vivian, of Torquay, who, having published portions of it in 1869, presented it in 1867 to the Torquay Natural History Society, whose property it still remains. In 1869 I had the pleasure of printing the whole in the 'Transactions' of the Devonshire Association. Whilst Mr. MacEnery was conducting his researches, a few independent diggings, on a less extensive scale, were taken by other gentlemen. The principal of these was Mr. Godwin-Austen, the well-known geologist, whose papers fully bore out all that MacEnery had stated (see Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond., 2nd series, vi. p. 446). In 1846 a sub-committee of the Torquay Natural History Society undertook the careful exploration of very small parts of the cavern, and their Report was entirely confirmatory of the statements of their predecessors—that undoubted flint implements did occur, mixed with the remains of extinct mammals, in the cave-earth, beneath a thick floor of stalagmite. The sceptical position of the authorities in geological science remained unaffected, however, until 1858, when the discovery and systematic exploration of a comparatively
