Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/376

298 that and a long subsequent period the proper method of studying deposits of this kind was not understood, and the several layers were not distinguished. Trenches were cut that went through beds separated in age by many centuries, perhaps thousands of years, and no distinction was made between what lay near the surface and what was found in the lowermost strata. A proper examination began in March, 1866, and was continued without intermission through the summer of 1880 under the able direction of Mr. W. Pengelly, at a cost of nearly two thousand pounds.

Kent's Cavern gives evidence of a double occupation by man at a remote distance of time the one from the other. The upper beds are of cave-earth. Below that is the breccia, and in the upper alone are traces of the hyena found. In the lowest strata of crystalline breccia are rude flint and chert implements of the same type as that found elsewhere in the river-drift. In association with these were the remains of the cave-bear, and a tool was found manufactured out of an already fossilised tooth of this animal. The chert and flint employed were from the gravels that lie between Newton Abbot and Torquay.

Above the breccia is the cave-earth, in which flint implements are by far more numerous, and are of a higher form, some being carefully chipped all round. The earlier tool was fashioned by heavy blows dealt against the core of flint, detaching large flakes. But the tools of the second period are neatly trimmed. The flakes were detached, very often by pressure and a jerk, and then