Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/474

340 eminent living authors. "All vivid with undimmed hues—its walls fresh as if painted yesterday—not a tint faded from the rich mosaic of its floors—in its forum the half-finished columns, as left by the workman's hands—before the trees in its gardens the sacrificial tripod—in its halls the chest of treasure—in its baths the strigil—in its theatres the counter of admission—in its saloons the furniture and the lamp—in its tricliniæ the fragments of the last feast—in its cubicula the perfume and the rouge of faded beauty—and everywhere the skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute but gorgeous machinery of luxury and of life."

Although the relics of man and his works have been found in many places associated with the bones of extinct species of animals, yet the circumstances under which such collocations have occurred have generally, upon a rigid examination, failed to establish the synchronism of the human and quadrupedal remains. Assemblages of this nature have been observed in various ossiferous caverns in England, and on the Continent, and in South America. It will suffice for my present purpose to select the following instance, which has lately been communicated to the Geological Society of London, because it presents an epitome of the various facts which bear on this problem.

Every one knows that near Torquay, in Devonshire, there is a chasm or fissure in the limestone strata, named 'Kent's Hole,' which has long been celebrated for the quantities of fossil bones belonging to extinct species of bears, hyenas, lions, tigers, &c., that have from time to time been dug up from its recesses. These remains occur in a bed of reddish sandy loam, which covers the bottom of the chasm, or cavern, to a thickness of twenty feet. The teeth and bones are for the most part in an excellent state of preservation. The principal chasm is 600 feet in length; and there are several lateral fissures of less extent. A bed of hard, solid stalagmite, from one to four feet thick, is spread over the ossiferous loam, and covered with a thin layer of earth, with here and