Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/475

Rh there patches of charcoal mixed with human bones, and coarse earthen vessels.

On breaking through the sparry floor, the red loam, containing teeth and bones, is brought to view; and imbedded in it, and at a depth of several feet, and intermingled with remains of extinct hears and carnivora, there have been discovered several flint knives, arrow and spear-heads, and fragments of pottery. The stone implements are of the kind usually found in early British tumuli, and doubtless belong to the same period; yet here they were unquestionably collocated with fossil bones of immense antiquity, and beneath the impermeable and undisturbed floor of the cavern, which was entire till broken through by the exploration that led to the exhumation of these relics. This discovery gave rise to many curious speculations, because it was supposed to present unequivocal proof that man, and the extinct carnivora, were the contemporary inhabitants of the dry land, at the period when the ossiferous loam was deposited: but the facts described do not appear to me to warrant this inference. Kent's Hole, Banwell Cave, and indeed all the ossiferous caverns I have examined, are mere fissures in limestone rocks that have been filled with drift while submerged in shallow water, and into which the limbs and carcases of the quadrupeds were floated by currents; for the bones, though broken, are very rarely waterworn, and consequently must have been protected by the muscles and soft parts. Upon the emergence of the land, of which the raised beds of shingle afford proof, the fissures were elevated above the waters, and gradually drained; the formation of stalactites and stalagmites, from the percolation of water through the superincumbent beds of limestone, then commenced, and continued to a late period.

If, when Kent's Hole first became accessible, and while the floor was in a soft or plastic state, and before the formation of the stalactitic covering, some of the wandering British aborigines prowled into the cave, or occasionally sought shelter there, the occurrence of stone instruments, pottery, bones, &c., in the ossiferous loam, may be readily explained: for any hard or heavy substances, even if not buried, would quickly sink beneath the surface to a depth of a few feet, and afterwards become hermetically sealed up as it were, by the crust of stalagmite that now forms the solid pavement.