would be necessary to form this depth of earth. So we may conclude that
at least 6,400 years ago Neolithic man used the cave. A long time
previous to this lived the creatures of the lower cave earth, the bison,
elephant, and the hyena with the solitary human bone, which belonged to
the sharp-shinned race (Platycnemic) of beings, the earliest dwellers in
our country.

It is doubtful whether Palaeolithic man has left any descendants. The
Esquimaux appear to somewhat resemble them. Professor Boyd Dawkins, in
his remarkable book, _Cave Hunting_, traces this relationship in the
character of implements, methods of obtaining food and cooking it, modes
of preparing skins for clothing, and particularly in the remarkable
skill of depicting figures on bone which both races display. In carving
figures on bone and teeth early man in Britain was certainly more
skilful than his successor; but he was a very inferior type of the human
race, yet his intelligence and mode of life have been deemed not lower
than those of the Australian aborigines.

The animals which roamed through the country in this Pleistocene period
were the elk and reindeer, which link us on to the older and colder
period when Arctic conditions prevailed; the Irish deer, a creature of
great size whose head weighed about eighty pounds; bison, elephant,
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, wolf, otter, bear, horse, red deer, roe,
urus or gigantic ox, the short-horned ox (_bos longifrons_), boar,
badger and many others which survive to the present day, and have
therefore a very long line of ancestors.

The successor of the old stone implement maker was Neolithic man, to
whom we have already had occasion to refer. Some lengthy period of
geological change separates him from his predecessor of the Old Stone