Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/368

354 1865, by a most competent committee of the British Association, of a large cavern in south Devonshire, near Torquay, called "Kent's Hole." I have had the opportunity of personally studying the modes of procedure there under the guidance of Mr. Pengelly, secretary of the committee, and can bear testimony to the scrupulous care, the vigilant watchfulness, and the great skill and knowledge with which the investigations are prosecuted. The following is a brief sketch of what has been discovered in the course of the exploration: The bottom of the cavern was found to be encumbered with huge blocks of limestone that had become detached from the roof, between and under which was a layer of vegetable mold of varying depths up to a foot or more. In this layer were found objects of various periods, running back as far as the times of the Roman occupation of the island. Below this came a floor, a stalagmite of an average thickness of sixteen to twenty inches, and underneath it a layer of cave-earth four feet deep, in which were found objects of man's fabrication. Still lower they came upon a second floor of stalagmite, which in some places had attained a thickness as great as twelve feet. Below all came a breccia, in which were found numerous teeth and bones of the cave-bear, and with them three undoubted flint instruments. Now, in one part of the cavern there is a huge boss of stalagmite rising from the floor, and on it is inscribed "Robert Hedges, of Ireland, February 20, 1688." For nearly two hundred years the process of the formation of stalagmite appears to have been going on, and still the letters are now only covered by a film of not more than one twentieth of an inch in thickness. Even granting that the deposition of stalagmite may have proceeded much more rapidly under former conditions than at present, when more water and more carbonic acid may have penetrated the cavern, still it is evident what a lapse of time is required to account for the formation of such a mass of material as we have here. Nor can accident or fraud be invoked to explain the presence of these relics of man, under the circumstances in which these have been found. The work was executed under the daily supervision of the committee, and by trustworthy laborers, and no intermingling of objects falling from a higher level; no burying of them in later times in excavations made in an older deposit; no attempt at making gain from forged articles palmed off upon credulous collectors in this case is possible. Like results have been reached by the same committee in the "Brixhaw Cave," on the opposite side of Torbay, which was purchased and thoroughly explored by them immediately after its accidental discovery in 1858, through its roof having been broken into in quarrying. In this case the additional guarantee was afforded for the genuineness of the contents, that its exploration was almost contemporaneous with its discovery. Space will not allow more than an allusion to the laborious and fruitful researches of the late Messrs. Lartet and Christy in the caves and the rock-shelters of the valley of the Dordogne and its affluents,