Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/129

Rh Roman Catholic priest, began a four years' exploration of the cave in 1825, and prepared a narrative of his work, which was not published for several years after his death, having been lost, and found by Pengelly after a long search. He showed that the cave had been inhabited, practically at the same time, by man and various extinct animals; but the antiquity of man not being yet a live subject, little regard was paid to his evidences. With a grant of a hundred pounds from the British Association, the work was begun under the direction of a committee of which Pengelly was the leading spirit and the working member. It opened a new chapter in his life, his daughter says, "for he not only superintended the exploration of the cavern, but undertook its entire management, throwing himself, heart and soul, into the numerous duties which it entailed. The labor was arduous, and severely taxed his energies for fifteen years; but it was a congenial employment, and most faithfully performed.… After undertaking the exploration, Pengelly became such an enthusiast in the progress made that, when in Torquay, he never (unless prevented by illness) failed on a single week day to visit the cavern, while he devoted many hours at home in the examination of the specimens exhumed. He even abridged his short holidays, and all idea of living in London was abandoned on this account." In the investigation, the surface accumulations having been removed and preserved for examination, the floor of granular stalagmite was stripped off, so as to lay bare the cave earth, and this was dug out ultimately to a depth of four feet in a series of prismatic blocks, a yard long and a foot square in section, layer by layer. This material was examined in the cave by candlelight, then at the door by daylight. A box was appropriated to each "yard," in which all the objects of interest found in that particular earth were put. The boxes, with the record of what they contained, were sent daily to Pengelly, who cleaned the articles and repacked them, and kept regular records of his day's works. Other materials were dealt with with similar thoroughness in ways according to their nature. "Whatever was discovered beneath the stalagmite flooring must have been sealed up by it for, at the very least, two thousand years, probably for a much longer time." The exploration was completed June 19, 1880. The more than seventy-three hundred prisms of material which proved productive yielded, besides fifty thousand bones examined by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, numerous implements, including those of bone, the work of man. Two deposits were evident, one of "cave earth," and one of breccia beneath it. A glance at the implements from them showed that they were very dissimilar. Those from the breccia were more massive and ruder in every way than the others, and none of them were of bone. "In short, the stone tools, though both sets were unpolished