deep, at the very bottom of the excavation, where it lay in contact with the molar tooth of a young rhinoceros.

Sixth, a second Stalagmite floor, sometimes more than three feet thick, and of a highly crystalline structure. This was struck in the southern part of this division of the cave. This contained quite as many bones as the first stalagmite layer, but so far as examined, they belonged to the cave-bear only.

Seventh, a Breccia, beneath the second stalagmite floor, composed of red loam, mixed with angular and rounded stones, and the whole cemented firmly together. This is of unknown depth. This equalled, if it did not surpass, the cave-earth in the number of bones buried in it; but there was no variety, all belonged to the cave-bear and lay in the most confused manner.

There are evidences of the action of water in this cave also. Most of the red loam and rounded stones, and probably many of the relics, were washed in, if not by a perennial stream, yet by occasional floods rising to sufficient height to flow in at the two entrances.

Such are the relics of man and beast found in Caves. But it is not in the dark recesses of underground vaults and tunnels only that such remains have been discovered; similar things have been met with in the valleys and beds and drifts of many rivers. "Throughout a large portion of Europe," says Sir Charles Lyell, "we find at moderate elevations above the present river channels, usually at a height of less than forty feet, but sometimes much higher, beds of gravel, sand and loam, containing bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other

quadrupeds, some of extinct, others of living species." With these are frequently mingled flint implements of various kinds, as in the caves. Both are sometimes found in remnants of drift beds hanging like small terraces upon the sloping sides of valleys, from ten to a hundred feet above the level of the streams that flow through them. In such situations many flint implements and animal remains have, within the past twentyfive years, been discovered in the valley of the Somme in France. Sometimes both kinds of relics are found buried deep in the bottom alluvium through which the rivers now flow; this is the case along the Thames; many bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, and other animals, have been found in the gravel on which London stands; they have been dug up on the site of Waterloo Place, St. James' Square, Charing Cross, Bethnal Green, and the London Docks; and in the British Museum is laid up a flint weapon of the spearhead form, which was found with an elephant's tooth, near Gray's Inn Lane, in the heart of the city. Similar discoveries have been made in the valley of the Ouse and several other streams.

Now in regard to these relics, whether found in caves or valley drifts and deposits, it is necessary to observe that the fact that the implements or bones of man lie together, or in the same situation as the remains of extinct animals, is not always to be regarded a proof that man and such animals must have been contemporaneous. They may have lived in ages far distant, and died in localities widely separated, and yet their remains through

various agencies may have been brought together and buried in the same spot; rains and floods may have effected this along the valleys; and the tools and bones of man may have been washed into caverns where the bones of animals had rested long before him, and been whirled into intimate conjunction by the eddies of subterranean currents. "That such intermixtures have really taken place in some caverns," says Lyell, "and that geologists have occasionally been deceived, and have assigned to one and the same period fossils which had really been introduced at successive times, will readily be conceded."

There is sufficient evidence, however, that this has not always been the case-there are instances that clearly indicate that they were coeval. In the Brixham cave, the reader will remember, close to a very perfect flint tool, there was found the entire hind leg of a cave-bear, every bone in its natural place, clearly proving that it must have been introduced clothed with its muscles. Had the flint tool been subsequently buried close to it by the eddies of a subterranean current, these bones would have been washed asunder and scattered. A hind limb of an extinct rhinoceros was found under the same circumstances in gravel containing flint implements, at Menchecourt, France. Again, in Kent's Hole, the detection of the human jaw at the base of the first stalagmite layer, and of the remains of extinct mammals at the upper surface; and also the presence of the bone implements with extinct animals clear below this impervious stalagmite floor, render it impossible to doubt that

VL

man was the contemporary of the mammoth and his compeers. With these and other evidences, therefore, before us, we regard it as an established fact that some of the extinct mammalia were coeval with man.

From this fact, namely, the finding of human bones and tools in such connection with the remains of extinct animals as to prove them contemporaneous, two arguments have been derived respecting the antiquity of man; one grounded on the present elevated situation of the caves and drifts where these relics have been found, the other on the great length of time supposed to have elapsed since these animals became extinct. These two trains of reasoning, it has been asserted, prove that Man has been an inhabitant of the earth for a vastly longer period than what the Bible history represents. It is important, therefore, that we examine these arguments.

First, then, that based on the situation of the caves and terraces where these commingled remains of man and beasts have been discovered: it runs thus-These bones and implements were for the most part deposited in the caves and terraces by water, that is, by the streams now flowing so many scores or hundreds of feet below them, but then above, or at their level; these streams have since gradually worn and scooped out these valleys through the rocky strata to their present width and depth; but to effect this enormous amount of erosion, at the slow rate we see them working, must have occupied many tens of thousands of years; therefore, those bones and implements of man must be so many tens of thousands of years old. Such is the argument, and such

Let us

the conclusion to which it seeks to bring us. look at it; of what do we find its several links composed? Simply of so many assumptions, which have not been and never can be proved.

It is a mere assumption that the water that flowed through these caverns was supplied by the streams now so far below them. There is no evidence that these caverns ever were such permanent water-courses; the loam and bones and tools they contain might have been washed into them at intervals in times of heavy rains through fissures from above, of which these limestone districts are full; in many cases they are seen to have been in communication with the surface by such apertures, but which are now choked up; and the rains might have flowed in even through their present entrances which open on the hill-sides, for the outward conformation of the ground might have been very dif ferent once from what they are now,-in the course of hundreds or thousands of years masses of rock may have fallen and masses of earth may have crumbled down, so as to entirely change the configuration of the surface about them.

Sir Charles Lyell, after a careful examination of these caves and valleys, came to the conclusion that the human relics mixed with those of extinct animals were probably not coeval. "The caverns having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having served at other times as places of human habitation, worship, sepulture, concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive that the bones of man and those of animals which