The Zoologist/3rd series, vol 1 (1877)/Issue 9/The Ossiferous Caverns of Devonshire
THE OSSIFEROUS CAVERNS OF DEVONSHIRE.
By W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.[1]
When, as long ago as 1841, the British Association made its only previous visit to Plymouth, some of us, now amongst its oldest members, thought ourselves too young to take any part in its proceedings. If the effects of that meeting are still traceable in this district, it will be admitted, of course, that the seed then sown was of excellent quality and that it fell on good soil. Be this as it may, the hope may be cherished that thirty-six years will not again be allowed to elapse between two consecutive visits to the capital of the two south-western counties. One effect of this wide hiatus is the loss of almost all the human links whose presence on this occasion would have pleasantly connected the present with the past. A glance at the lists of Trustees and the General, Sectional and Local officers in 1841 will show that the presence of scarcely one of them can be hoped for on this occasion; and there is but little probability that any of those who prepared Reports or Papers for the last Plymouth Meeting will have done so for that which is now assembled.
Nor are these the only changes. In 1841 Section C embraced, as at the beginning, the geographers as well as the geologists; but ten years later the geographers were detached, whether to find room for themselves, or to make room for the students of an older geography, it is not necessary to inquire. Some years afterwards came an innovation which, until entering on the preparation of this Address, I always regarded as a decided improvement. The first Presidential Address to this Section was delivered at Leeds in 1858, by the late Mr. Hopkins, so well known to geologists for his able application of his great mathematical powers to sundry important problems in their science; and from that time to the present, with the exception of the Meetings of 1860 and 1870 only, the President of this Section has delivered an Address.
None of the local geological papers read in 1841 appear to have attracted so much attention as those on Lithodomous Perforations, Raised Beaches, Submerged Forests, and Caverns (see 'Athenæum' for 7th to 28th of August, 1841); and, as an effort to connect the present with the past, I have decided upon taking up one of these threads, and devoting the remarks I have now to offer to the History of Cavern-Exploration in Devonshire. I am not unmindful that there were giants in those days; and no one can deplore more than I do our loss of Buckland and De la Beche, amongst many others; nor can I forget the enormous strides opinion has made since 1841, when, in this Section, Dr. Buckland "contended that human remains had never been found under such circumstances as to prove their contemporaneous existence with the Hyænas and Bears of the caverns;" and added that "in Kent's Hole the Celtic knives .... were found in holes dug by art, and which had disturbed the floor of the cave and the bones below it" ('Athenæum,' 14th Aug. 1841, p. 626). This scepticism, however, did the good service of inducing cavern explorers to conduct their researches with an accuracy which should place their results, whatever they might prove to be, amongst the undoubted additions to human knowledge.
The principal caverns in South Devon occur in the limestone districts of Plymouth, Yealmpton, Brixham, Torquay, Buckfastleigh, and Chudleigh; but as those in the last two localities have yielded nothing of importance to the anthropologist or the palaeontologist, they will not be further noticed on this occasion. In dealing with the others it seems most simple to follow mainly the order of chronology; that is to say, to commence with the cavern which first caught scientific attention, and, having finished all that the time at my disposal will allow me to say about it, but not before, to proceed to the next, in the order thus defined; and so on through the series.
Oreston Caverns.—When Mr. Whidbey engaged to superintend the construction of the Plymouth Breakwater, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, requested him to examine narrowly any caverns he might meet with in the limestone-rock to he quarried at Oreston, near the mouth of the River Plym, not more than two miles from the room in which we are assembled, and have the bones or any other fossil remains that were met with carefully preserved (see Phil. Trans. 1817,pp. 176–182). This request was cheerfully complied with, and Mr. Whidbey had the pleasure of discovering bone-caves in November, 1816, November, 18-20, August and November, 1822, and of sending the remains found in them to the Royal Society. It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that, though cavern-researches received a great impulse from the discoveries in Kirkdale, Yorkshire, and especially from Dr.Buckland's well-known and graphic description of them, such researches had originated many years before. The request by Sir Joseph Banks was made at least as early as 1812 (see Trans. Devon. Assoc. v. pp. 252, 253), and a paper on the Oreston discoveries was read to the Royal Society in February, 1817, whereas the Kirkdale Cavern was not discovered until 1821. British cave-hunting appears to have been a science of Devonshire birth. The Oreston Caverns soon attracted a considerable number of able observers; they were visited in 1822 by Dr. Buckland and Mr. Warburton; and in a comparatively short time became the theme of a somewhat voluminous literature. Nothing of, importance, however, seems to have been met with from 1822 until 1858, when another cavern, containing a large number of bones, was broken into. Unfortunately there was no one at hand to superintend the exhumation of the specimens; the work was left entirely to the common workmen, and was badly done; many of the remains were dispersed beyond recovery; the matrix in which they were buried was never adequately examined; and we are utterly ignorant, and must for ever remain so, as to whether they did or did not contain indications of human existence. I visited the spot from time to time, and bought up everything to be met with; but other scientific work in another part of the county occupied me too closely to allow more than an occasional visit. The greater part of the specimens I secured were lodged in the British Museum, where they seem to have been forgotten, whilst a few remain in my private collection. Some difference of opinion has existed respecting the character of the successive caverns, and much mystery has been imported into the question of the introduction of their contents. Mr. Whidbey, it is said, "saw no possibility of the cavern of 1816 having had any external communication through the rock in which it was enclosed" (Phil. Trans. 1817, pp. 176–182); but Dr. Buckland was of opinion that they were all at first fissures open at the top, and "that the openings had been long filled up with rubbish, mud, stalactite, or fragments of rock cemented, as sometimes happens, into a breccia as solid as the original rock, and overgrown with grass" (Phil. Trans. 1822, pp. 171–240). The conclusion I arrived at, after studying so much of the roof of the cavern of 1858 as remained intact, was that Dr. Buckland's opinion was fully borne out by the facts; that, in short, the Oreston Caverns were Fissure Caverns, not Tunnel Caverns. The cavern of 1858 was an almost vertical fissure, extending a length of about 90 feet from N.N.E. to S.S.W. It commenced at about 8 feet below the surface of the plateau, continued thence to the base of the cliff, but how much further was not known, and its ascertained height was about 52 feel. It was 2 feet wide at top, whence it gradually widened to 10 feet at bottom. The roof, judging from that part which had not been destroyed, was a mass of limestone-breccia, made up of large angular fragments, cemented with carbonate of lime, and requiring to be blasted as much as ordinary limestone. The cavern was completely filled with deposits of various kinds. The uppermost 8 feet consisted of loose angular pieces of limestone, none of which exceeded 10 tbs. in weight, mixed with a comparatively small amount of such sand as is common in dolomitised limestone districts, but without a trace of stalagmite or fossil of any kind. The 32 feet next below were occupied with similar materials, with the addition of a considerable quantity of tough, dark, unctuous clay. Between this mass and the outer wall of the cavern was a nearly vertical plate of stalagmite, usually about 2 feet thick, and containing, at by no means wide intervals, firmly cemented masses of breccia identical in composition with the adjacent bed just mentioned. The bones the cavern yielded were all found within these 32 feet; and were met with equally in the loose and the coherent breccia, as well as in the stalagmite. A somewhat considerable number of ellipsoidal balls of clay, from 1·5 to 2·5 inches in greatest diameter, occurred in the clay of this bone-bed, but not elsewhere. Still lower was a mass of dark, tough, unctuous clay, containing a very few, small, angular stones, but otherwise perfectly homogeneous, and known to be 12 feet deep, but how much more was undetermined. The osseous remains found at Oreston prior to 1858 have been described by Sir E. Home, Mr. Clift, Dr. Buckland, Prof. Owen, Mr. Busk, and others. The animals represented were Ursus priscus, U. spelæus, Weasel (?), Wolf, Fox, Cave Hyæna, Cave Lion, Rhinoceros leptorhinus, Equus fossilis, E. plicidens, 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 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 small virgin cavern on Windmill Hill, at Brixham, led to a sudden and complete revolution; for it was seen that whatever were the facts elsewhere, there had undoubtedly been found at Brixham flint implements commingled with remains of the Mammoth and his companions, and in such a way as to render it impossible to doubt that man occupied Devonshire before the extinction of the cave mammals. Under the feeling that the statements made by MacEnery and his followers respecting Kent's Hole were perhaps, after all, to be accepted as verities, the British Association, in 1864, appointed a committee to make a complete, systematic and accurate exploration of the cavern, in which it was known that very extensive portions remained entirely intact. This committee commenced its labours on March 28, 1865; it has been reappointed, year after year, with sufficient grants of money, up to the present time; the work has gone on continuously throughout the entire thirteen years; and the result has been, not only a complete confirmation of Mr. MacEnery's statements, but the discovery of far older deposits than he suspected—deposits implying great changes of, at least, local geographical conditions; changes in the fauna of the district; and yielding evidence of men more ancient and far ruder than even those who made the oldest flint tools found in Kent's Hole prior to the appointment of the committee. The cavern consists of a series of chambers and passages, which resolve themselves into two main divisions, extending from nearly north to south in parallel lines, but passing into each other near their extremities, and throwing off branches, occasionally of considerable size. The successive deposits, in descending order were—
1st, or uppermost. Fragments of block and limestone from an ounce to upwards of 100 tons weight each, which had fallen from the roof from time to time, and were, in some instances, cemented with carbonate of lime.
2nd. Beneath and between these blocks lay a dark-coloured mud or mould, consisting largely of decayed leaves and other vegetable matter. It was from 3 to 12 inches thick, and known as the black mould. This occupied the entire eastern division, with the exception of a small chamber in its south-western end only, but was not found in the other, the remoter, parts of the cavern.
3rd. Under this was a stalagmitic floor, commonly of granular texture, and frequently laminated, from less than an inch to fully five feet in thickness, and termed the granular stalagmite.
4th. An almost black layer, about four inches thick, composed mainly of small fragments of charred wood, and distinguished as the black band, occupied an area of about 100 square feet, immediately under tire granular stalagmite, and, at the nearest point, not more than thirty-two feet from one of the entrances to the cavern. Nothing of the kind has occurred elsewhere.
5th. Immediately under the granular stalagmite and the black band lay a light red clay, containing usually about 50 per cent, of small angular fragments of limestone, and somewhat numerous blocks of the same rock as large as those lying on the black mould. In this deposit, known as the cave-earth, many of the stones and bones were, at all depths, invested with thin stalagmitic films. The cave-earth was of unknown depth near the entrances, where its base had never been reached; but in the remoter parts of the cavern it did not usually exceed a foot, and in a few localities it "thinned out" entirely.
6lh. Beneath the cave-earth there was usually found a floor of stalagmite having a crystalline texture, and termed on that account the crystalline stalagmite. It was commonly thicker than the granular floor, and in one instance but little short of 12 feet.
7th. Below the whole occurred, so far as is at present known, the oldest of the cavern deposits. It was composed of subangular and rounded pieces of dark-red grit, embedded in a sandy paste of the same colour. Small angular fragments of limestone, and investing films of stalagmite, both prevalent in the cave-earth, were extremely rare. Large blocks of limestone were occasionally met with; and the deposit, to which the name of breccia were given, was of a depth exceeding that to which the exploration has yet been carried.
Except in a very few small branches, the bottom of the cavern has nowhere been reached. In the cases in which there was no cave-earth, the granular stalagmite rested immediately on the crystalline; and where the crystalline stalagmite was not present the cave-earth and breccia were in direct contact. Large isolated masses of the crystalline stalagmite, as well as concreted lumps of the breccia, were occasionally met with in the cave-earth, thus showing that the older deposits had, in portions of the cavern, been partially broken up, dislodged, and re-deposited. No instance was met with of the incorporation in a lower bed of fragments derived from an upper one. In short, wherever all the deposits were found in one and the same vertical section, the order of superposition was clear and invariable; and elsewhere the succession, though defective, was never transgressed. Excepting the overlying blocks of limestone, of course, all the deposits contained remains of animals, which, however, were not abundant in the stalagmites. The black mould, the uppermost bed, yielded teeth and bones of Man, Dog, Fox, Badger, Brown Bear, Bos longifrons, Roedeer, Sheep, Goat, Pig, Hare, Rabbit, and Seal—species still existing, and almost all of them in Devonshire. This has been called the Ovine bed, the remains of Sheep being restricted to it. In it were also found numerous flint flakes and "strike-lights," stone spindlewhorls, fragments of curvilineal pieces of slate, amber beads, bone tools, including awls, chisels, and combs; bronze articles, such as rings, a fibula, a spoon, a spear-head, a socketed celt, and a pin; pieces of smelted copper, and a great number and variety of potsherds, including fragments of Samian ware. The granular stalagmite, black band, and cave-earth, taken together as belonging to one and the same biological period, may be termed the Hyænine beds, the Cave Hyæna being their most prevalent species, and found in them alone. So far as they have been identified, the remains belong to the Cave Hyæna, Equus caballus, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, gigantic Irish Deer, Bos primigeneus, Bison priscus, Red Deer, Mammoth, Badger, Cave Bear, Grizzly Bear, Brown Bear, Cave Lion, Wolf, Fox, Reindeer, Beaver, Glutton, Machairodus latidens, and Man—the last being a part of a jaw with teeth, in the granular stalagmite. In the same beds were found unpolished ovate and lanceolate implements made from flakes, not nodules, of flint and chert; flint flakes, chips, and "cores;" "whetstones," a "hammer-stone," dead shells of Pecten, bits of charcoal and bone tools, including a needle or bodkin having a well-formed eye, a pin, an awl, three harpoons, and a perforated tooth of Badger. The artificial objects, of both bone and stone, were found at all depths in each of the hyænine beds, but were much more numerous below the stalagmite than in it. The relics found in the crystalline stalagmite and the breccia, in some places extremely abundant, were almost exclusively those of Bear, the only exceptions being a very few remains of Cave Lion and Fox. Hence these have been termed the Ursine beds. It will be remembered that teeth and bones of Bear were also met with in both the hyænine and the ovine beds; and it should be understood that this biological classification is intended to apply to Kent's Cavern only. The ursine deposits, or rather the breccia, the lowest of them, also yielded evidences of human existence; but they were exclusively tools made from nodules, not flakes, of flint and chert.
Ansty's-Cove Cavern.—About three furlongs from Kent's Hole towards N.N.E., near the top of the lofty cliff forming the northern boundary of the beautiful Ansty's Cove, Torquay, there is a cavern where, simultaneously with those in Kent's Cavern, Mr. MacEnery conducted some researches, of which he has left a brief account (see Trans. Devon. Assoc, vi. pp. 61–69). I have visited it several times, but it seems to be frequently kept under lock and key, as a tool and powder-house, by the workmen in a neighbouring quarry. It is a simple gallery, and, according to Mr. MacEnery, 63 feet long, from 3 to 9 feet high, and from 3 to 6 feet broad. Beneath some angular stones he found a stalagmitic floor 14 inches thick, and in the deposit below remains of Deer, Horse, Bear, Fox, Hyæna (?), coprolites, a few marine and land shells, one white flint tool with fragments of others, a Roman coin, and potsherds. In a letter to Sir W. C. Trevelyan, dated 16th December, 1825, Dr. Buckland states that Mr. MacEnery had found in this cave "bones of all sorts of beasts, and also flint knives and Roman coins; in short, an open-mouthed cave, which has been inhabited by animals of all kinds, quadruped and biped, in all successive generations, and who have all deposited their exuviæ one upon another" {ibid. p. 69).
Yealm-Bridge Cavern.—About the year 1832 the workmen broke into a bone-cavern in Yealm-Bridge Quarry, about one mile from the village of Yealmpton, and eight miles E.S.E. from Plymouth; and through their operations it was so nearly destroyed that but a small arm of it remained in 1835, when it was visited by Mr. J.C. Bellamy, who at once wrote an account of it, from which it appears that, so far as he could learn, the cavern was about 30 feet below the original limestone surface, and was filled to from 1 foot to 6 feet of the roof (see Nat. Hist. S. Devon. 1839, pp. 86—105). In the same year, but subsequently, it was examined by Captain (afterwards Colonel) Mudge, who states that there were originally three openings into the cave, each about 12 feet above the River Yealm; that the deposits were, in descending order: —
| 1. | Loam with bones and stones | 3·5 feet |
| 2. | Stiff whitish clay | 2·5 feet„ |
| 3. | Sand | 6·0 feet„ |
| 4. | Red clay | 3·5 feet„ |
| 5. | Argillaceous sand | 6 to 18·0 feet„ |
The Ash-Hole.—On the southern shore of Torbay, midway between the town of Brixham and Berry Head, and about half a mile from each, there is a cavern known as the "Ash-Hole." It was partially explored, probably about, or soon after, the time Mr. MacEnery was engaged in Kent's Hole, by the late Rev. H.F. Lyte, who, unfortunately, does not appear to have left any account of the results. The earliest mention of this cavern I have been able to find is a very brief one in Bellamy's 'Natural History of South Devon,' published in 1839 (p. 14). During the Plymouth Meeting in 1841, Mr. George Bartlett, a native of Brixham, who assisted Mr. Lyte, described in this Section the objects of interest the Ash-Hole had yielded (see Report Brit. Assoc. 1851, Trans. Sections, p. 61). So far as was then known, the cave was thirty yards long and six yards broad. Below a recent accumulation, four feet deep, of loam and earth, with land and marine shells, bones of the domestic fowl and of man, pottery, and various implements, lay a true cave-earth, abounding in the remains of Elephant. Prof Owen, who identified, from this lower bed, relics of Badger, Polecat, Stoat, Water Vole, Rabbit, and Reindeer, remarks, that for the first good evidence of the Reindeer in this island he had been indebted to Mr. Bartlett, who stated that the remains were found in this cavern (see Brit. Foss. Mam. 1846, pp. 109–110, 113–114, 116, 204, 212, 479–480). I have made numerous visits to the spot, which, when Mr. Lyte began his diggings, must have been a shaftlike fissure, accessible from the top only. A lateral opening, however, has been quarried into it; there is a narrow tunnel extending westward, in which the deposit is covered with a thick sheet of stalagmite, and where one is tempted to believe that a few weeks' labour might be well invested.
Brixham Cavern.—Early in 1858 an unsuspected cavern was broken into by quarrymen at the north-western angle of Windmill Hill at Brixham, at a point 75 feet above the surface of the street, almost vertically below, and 100 feet above mean tide. On being found to contain bones, a lease in it was secured for the Geological Society of London, who appointed a committee of their members to undertake its exploration; funds were voted by the Royal Society, and supplemented by private subscriptions; the conduct of the investigation was intrusted to Mr. Prestwich and myself; and the work, under my superintendence, as the only resident member of the committee, was begun in July, 1858, and completed at midsummer, 1869. The cavern, comprised within a space of 135 feet from north to south, and 100 from east to west, consisted of a series of tunnel galleries from 6 to 8 feet in greatest depth, and 10 to 14 feet in height, with two small chambers and five external entrances. The deposits, in descending order, were:—
1st, or uppermost. A floor of stalagmite, from a few inches to a foot thick, and continuous over very considerable areas, but not throughout the entire cavern.
2nd. A mass of small angular fragments of limestone, cemented into a firm concrete with carbonate of lime, commenced at the principal entrance, which it completely filled, and whence it extended 34 feet only. It was termed the "first bed."
3rd. A layer of blackish matter, about 12 feet long, and nowhere more than a foot thick, occurred immediately beneath the first bed, and was designated the "second bed."
4th. A red, tenacious, clayey loam, containing a large number of angular and subangular fragments of limestone, varying from very small bits to blocks a ton in weight, made up the "third bed."
Pebbles of trap, quartz, and limestone were somewhat prevalent, whilst nodules of brown hematite of iron and blocks of stalagmite w-ere occasionally met with in it. The usual depth of the bed was from 2 to 4 feet, but this was exceeded by 4 or 5 feet in two localities.
5th. The third bed lay immediately on an accumulation of pebbles of quartz, greenstone, grit, and limestone, mixed with small fragments of shale. The depth of this, known as the "fourth" or "gravel bed," was undetermined; for, excepting a few feet only, the limestone bottom was nowhere reached. There is abundant evidence that this bed, as well as a stalagmitic floor which had covered it, had been partially broken up and dislodged before the introduction of the third bed.
Organic remains were found in the stalagmitic floor and in each of the beds beneath it, with the exception of the second only; but as ninety-five per cent, of the whole series occurred in the third, this was not unfrequently termed the "bone bed." The mammals represented in the stalagmite were Bear, Reindeer, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Mammoth, and Cave Lion. The first bed yielded Bear and Fox only. In the third bed were found relics of Mammoth, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Horse, Bos primigenius, B. longifrons, Red Deer, Reindeer, Roebuck, Cave Lion, Cave Hyæna, Cave Bear, Grizzly Bear, Brown Bear, Fox, Hare, Rabbit, Lagomys spelæus, Water Vole, Shrew, Polecat, and Weasel. The only remains met with in the fourth bed were those of Bear, Horse, Ox, and Mammoth. The human industrial remains exhumed in the cavern were flint implements and a hammer-stone, and occurred in the third and fourth beds only. The pieces of flint met with were thirty-six in number. Of these fifteen are held to show evidence of having been artificially worked, in nine the workmanship is rude or doubtful, four have been mislaid, and the remainder are believed not to have been worked at all (see Phil. Trans, vol. 163, 1873, pp. 561, 662). Of the undoubted tools, eleven were found in the third and four in the fourth bed. Two of those yielded by the third bed, found forty feet apart, in two distinct but adjacent galleries, and one a month before the other, proved to be parts of one and same nodule-tool; and I have little or no doubt that it had been washed out of the fourth bed and re-deposited in the third. The hammer-stone was a quartzite pebble, found in the upper portion of the fourth bed, and'bore distinct marks of the use to which it was applied- Speaking of the discovery of the tools just mentioned, Mr. Prestwich said in 1859:— "It was not until I had myself witnessed the conditions under which flint implements had been found at Brixhara, that I became fully impressed with the validity of the doubts thrown upon the previously prevailing opinions with respect to such remains in caves" (Phil. Trans. 1860, p. 280); and according to Sir C. Lyell, writing in 1863:—"A sudden change of opinion was brought about in England respecting the probable co-existence, at a former period, of man and many extinct mammalia, in consequence of the results obtained from the careful exploration of a cave at Brixham.... The new views very generally adopted by English geologists had no small influence on the subsequent progress of opinion in France" (Antiquity of Man, pp. 96, 97).
Bench Cavern.—Early in 1861 information was brought me that an ossiferous cave had just been discovered at Brixham, and, on visiting the spot, I found that, of the limestone quarries worked from time to time in the northern slope of Furzeham Hill, one known as Bench Quarry, about half a mile due north of Windmill Hill Cavern, and almost overhanging Torbay, had been abandoned in 1839, and that work had been recently resumed in it. It appeared that in 1839 the workmen had laid bare the greater part of a vertical dyke, composed of red clayey loam and angular pieces of limestone, forming a coherent wall-like mass, 27 feet high, 12 feet long, 2 feet in greatest thickness, and at its base 123 feet above sealevel. In the face of it lay several fine relics of the ordinary cave mammals, including an entire left lower jaw of Hyæna spelæa replete with teeth, but which had nevertheless failed to arrest the attention of the incurious workmen who exposed it, or of any one else. Soon after the resumption of the work in 1861, the remnant of the outer wall of the fissure was removed, and caused the fall of an incoherent part of the dyke, which it had previously supported. Amongst the débris the workmen collected some hundreds of specimens of skulls, jaws, teeth, vertebra, portions of antlers, and bones, but no indications of man. Mr. Wolston, the proprietor, sent some of the choicest specimens to the British Museum, and submitted the remainder to Mr. Ayshford Sanford, F.G.S., from whom I learn that the principal portion of them are relics of the Cave Hyæna, from the unborn whelp to very aged animals. With them, however, were remains of Bear, Reindeer, Ox, Hare, Arvicola ratticeps, A. agrestis, Wolf, Fox, and part of a single maxillary with teeth not distinguishable from those of Canis isatis. To this list I may add Rhinoceros, of which Mr. Wolston showed me at least one bone.
From the foregoing undesirably, but unavoidably, brief descriptions, it will be seen that the Devonshire caverns, to which attention has been now directed, belong to two classes—those of Oreston, the Ash-Hole, and Bench being Fissure Caves; whilst those of Yealm Bridge, Windmill Hill at Brixham, Kent's Hole, and Ansty's Cove are Tunnel Caves.
Windmill Hill and Kent's Hole Caverns have alone been satisfactorily explored; and besides them none have yielded evidence of the contemporaneity of man with the extinct cave mammals.
Oreston is distinguished as the only known British cavern which has yielded remains of Rhinoceros leptorhinus (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxvi. p. 456).
Yealm Bridge Cavern, if we may accept Mr. Bellamy's identification in 1835, was the first in this country in which relics of Glutton were found (South Devon Monthly Museum, vi. pp.218—223; see also Nat. Hist. S. Devon., 1839, p. 19). The same species was found in the caves of Somerset and Glamorgan in 1865 (Pleist. Mam., Pal. Soc, pp. xxi., xxii ), in Kent's Hole in 1869 (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1869, p. 207), and near Plas Heaton, in North Wales, in 1870 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxvii. p. 407).
Kent's Hole is the only known British cave which has afforded remains of Beaver (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1869, p. 208), and up to the present year the only one in which the remains of Machairodus latidens had been met with. Indeed Mr. MacEnery's statement, that he found in 1826 five canines and one incisor of this species in the famous Torquay cavern was held by many palaeontologists to be so very remarkable as, at least, to approach the incredible, until the Committee now engaged in the exploration exhumed, in 1872, an incisor of the same species, and thereby confirmed the announcement made by their distinguished predecessor nearly half a century before (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1872, p. 46). In April last (1877) the Rev. J.M. Mello was able to inform the Geological Society of London that Derbyshire had shared with Devon the honour of having been a home of Machairodus latidens, he having found its canine tooth in Robin Hood Cave, in that county, and that there, as in Kent's Hole, it was commingled with remains of the Cave Hyæna and its contemporaries (Abs. Proc. Geol. Soc., No. 334, pp. 3, 4).
The Ash-Hole, as we have already seen, afforded the first good evidence of a British Reindeer.
In looking at the published reports on the two famous Torbay caverns it will be found that they have certain points of resemblance as well as some of dissimilarity:—
1st. The lowest known bed in each is composed of materials which, whilst they differ in the two cases, agree in being such as may have been furnished by the districts adjacent to the cavern-hills respectively, but not by the hills themselves, and must have been deposited prior to the existing local geographical conditions. In each this bed contained flint implements and relics of Bear, but in neither of them those of Hyæna. In short, the fourth bed of Windmill Hill Cavern, Brixham, and the breccia of Kent's Hole, Torquay, are coeval, and belong to what I have called the Ursine period of the latter.
2nd. The beds just mentioned were in each cavern sealed with a sheet of stalagmite, which was partially broken up, and considerable portions of the subjacent beds were dislodged before the introduction of the beds next deposited.
3rd. The great bone bed, both at Brixham and Torquay, consisted of red clayey loam, with a large percentage of angular fragments of limestone; and contained flake implements of flint and chert, inosculating with remains of Mammoth, the Tichorhine Rhinoceros, and Hyæna. In fine, the cave-earth of Kent's Hole and the third bed of Brixham Cavern correspond in their materials, in their osseous contents, and in their flint tools. They both belong to what I have named the Hyænine period of the Torquay Cave.
But, as already stated, there are points in which the two caverns differ:—
1st. Whilst Kent's Hole was the home of man, as well as of the contemporary Hyæna during the absences of the human occupant, there is no reason to suppose that either man or any of the lower animals ever did more than make occasional visits to Brixham Cave. The latter contained no flint-chips, no bone-tools, no utilized Pecten-shells, no bits of charcoal, and no coprolites of Hyæna, all of which occurred in the cave-earth of Kent's Hole.
2nd. In the Torquay Cave relics of Hyæna were much more abundant in the cave-earth than those of any other species. Taking the teeth alone, of which vast numbers were found, those of the Hyæna amounted to about -30 per cent, of the entire series, notwithstanding the fact that, compared with most of the caveinammals, his jaws, when furnished completely, possess but few teeth. At Brixham, on the other hand, his relics of all kinds amounted to no more than 8·5 per cent, of all the osseous remains, whilst those of the Bear rose to 53 per cent.
3rd. The entrances of Brixham Cavern were completely filled up and its history suspended not later than the end of the Palaeolithic era. Nothing occurred within it from the days when Devonshire was occupied by the Cave and Grizzly Bears, Reindeer, Rhinoceros, Cave Lion, Mammoth, and Man, whose best tools were unpolished flints, until the quarrymen broke into it early in A.D. 1858. Kent's Cavern, on the contrary, seems to have never been closed, never unvisited by man, from the earliest Palæolithic times to our own, with the possible exception of the Neolithic era, of which it cannot be said to have yielded any certain evidence.
Though my "History of Cavern Exploration in Devonshire" is now completed, so far as the time at my disposal will allow, and so far as the materials are at present ripe for the historian, I venture to ask your further indulgence for a few brief moments whilst passing from the region of fact to that of inference.
That the Kent's Hole men of the Hyænine period—to say nothing at present of their predecessors of the Breccia—belonged to the Pleistocene times of the biologist, is seen in the fact that they were contemporary with mammals peculiar to and characteristic of those times. This contemporaneity proves them to have belonged to the Palæolithic era of Britain and Western Europe generally, as defined by the archæologist; and this is fully confirmed by their unpolished tools of flint and chert. That they were prior to the deposition of even the oldest part of the peat bogs of Denmark, with their successive layers of beech, pedunculated oak, sessile oak, and Scotch fir, we learn from the facts that even the lowest zone of the bogs has yielded no bones of mammals but those of recent species, and no tools but those of Neolithic type; whilst even the granular stalagmite, the uppermost of the Hyænine beds in Kent's Hole, has afforded relics of mammoth, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Cave Bear, and Cave Hyæna.
That the men of the Cave Breccia, or Ursine period, to whom we now turn, were of still higher antiquity, is obvious from the geological position of their industrial remains. That the two races of Troglodytes were separated by a wide interval of time we learn from the sheet of crystalline stalagmite, sometimes 12 feet thick, laid down after the deposition of the breccia had ceased, and before the introduction of the cave-earth had begun, as well as from the entire change in the materials composing the two deposits. But, perhaps, the fact which most emphatically indicates the chronological value of this interval is the difference in the faunas. In the cave-earth, as already slated, the remains of the Hyæna greatly exceed in number those of any other mammal; and it may be added that he is also disclosed by almost every relic of his contemporaries—their jaws have, through his agency, lost their condyles and lower borders; their bones are fractured after a fashion known by experiment to be his; and the splinters into which they are broken are deeply scored with his teeth-marks. His presence is also attested by the abundance of his droppings in every branch of the cavern. In short, Kent's Hole was one of his homes; he dragged hither, piecemeal, such animals as he found dead near it; and the well-known habits of his representatives of our day have led us to expect all this from him. When, however, we turn to the breccia, a very different spectacle awaits us. We meet with no trace whatever of his presence, not a single relic of his skeleton, not a bone on which he has operated, not a coprolite to mark as much as a visit. Can it be doubted that had he then occupied our country he would have taken up his abode in our cavern? Need we hesitate to regard this entire absence of all traces of so decided a cave-dweller as a proof that he had not yet made his advent in Britain? Are we not compelled to believe that Man formed part of the Devonshire fauna long before the Hyæna did? Is there any method of escaping the conclusion that between the era of the Breccia and that of the Cave-earth it was possible for the Hyaena to reach Britain?—in other words, that the last continental state of our country occurred during that interval? I confess that, in the present state of the evidence, I see no escape; and that the conclusion thus forced on me compels me to believe also that the earliest men of Kent's Hole were interglacial, if not preglacial.
- ↑ Opening Address as President of Section C. Read at the Meeting of the British Association, Plymouth, August, 1877.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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