occurrence in various parts of Europe of the bones of Man or the
works of his hands in cave-breccias and stalagmites, associated
with the remains of the extinct hyaena, bear, elephant, or
rhinoceros, has given rise to a suspicion that the date of Man must
be carried farther back than we had heretofore imagined. On the
other hand extreme reluctance was naturally felt on the part of
scientific reasoners to admit the validity of such evidence, seeing
that so many caves have been inhabited by a succession of tenants
and have been selected by Man as a place not only of domicile, but
of sepulture, while some caves have also served as the channels
through which the waters of occasional land-floods or engulfed
rivers have flowed, so that the remains of living beings which have
peopled the district at more than one era may have subsequently
been mingled in such caverns and confounded together in one and the
same deposit. But the facts brought to light in 1858, during the
systematic investigation of the Brixham cave, near Torquay in
Devonshire, which will be described in the sequel, excited anew the
curiosity of the British public and prepared the way for a general
admission that scepticism in regard to the bearing of cave evidence
in favour of the antiquity of Man had previously been pushed to an
extreme.

Since that period many of the facts formerly adduced in favour of
the co-existence in ancient times of Man with certain species of
mammalia long since extinct have been re-examined in England and on
the Continent, and new cases bearing on the same question, whether
relating to caves or to alluvial strata in valleys, have been
brought to light. To qualify myself for the appreciation and
discussion of these cases, I have visited in the course of the last
three years many parts of England, France, and Belgium, and have