Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/106

58 stones, stray fossils, flints chipped by the pressure of shifting gravels or falling masses, together with many other odds and ends which may be picked up on an ancient sea-beach, have often been mistaken for the works of man. On the other hand, as we have just seen, successive generations of learned antiquaries have unconcernedly passed over a series of real flint implements without even surmising that they were the productions of human hands, notwithstanding that their discoverers so regarded them. Then we have to make sure of the authenticity of relics.

Kent's Cavern.

It was about the beginning of the second quarter of last century that Kent's Cavern first became a subject of Palæolithic interest, owing to the researches of the Rev. J. MacEnery, who asserted that he found in it flint implements, associated with the bones and teeth of extinct animals, below a thick continuous sheet of stalagmite. But the legitimate inference from these facts—viz., that man was contemporary with these animals and lived before the deposition of the stalagmite, had little chance of being accepted by the public when opposed by the teaching and authority of so famous a geologist as Dr Buckland, author of the Reliquiæ Diluvianæ and of The Bridge-water Treatise on Geology and Mineralogy.

The facts on which Mr MacEnery based his conclusions were verified by fresh excavations made by Mr Godwin-Austin, F.G.S., in 1840, and afterwards by a committee appointed by the Torquay Natural History Society in 1846. Papers embodying the results of these investigations were read at the Geological Society of London, and at the meeting of the British Association for 1847. But, according to Mr Pengelly, F.R.S., the reception given to these researches was not encouraging, and the inconvenient conclusions arrived at "were given to an apathetic, unbelieving world." (See Literature of Kent's Cavern, by W. Pengelly; and Reports of British Association.)

The complete exploration of Kent's Cavern, under the superintendence of Mr Pengelly and a committee of the British Association, was one of the most important events which followed the publication of the works of Darwin, Lyell, Boucher