(B.) Below this was a stalagmite floor, varying in thickness from one to three feet, covering
(C.) The red earth, with stones, bones of the extinct animals, and flint implements, associated together in the greatest confusion, as well as large lumps of stalagmite and of breccia, which had been torn out of a pre-existent floor. In the “vestibule,” near one of the entrances, a black layer beneath the stalagmite, composed, to a great extent, of charcoal, indicated the position of the fire-places, and contained a vast number of rude unpolished palæolithic implements. There were also local stalagmitic bands. The flint implements were met with at various depths, and consist of three distinct types: the lanceolate, Fig. 96, the oval, with edge carefully chipped for cutting, Fig. 97, and the flake (see Fig. 106). Besides these a few implements have been discovered of the same shape as those found in the gravel beds; in outline and section roughly triangular, and tapering to a point from a blunt base, which was probably intended to be held in the hand.212 Several articles of bone and antler were also met with, comprising an awl, or piercer, a needle with the eye large enough to admit small packthread, and three harpoon-heads, one of which is barbed on both sides (Fig. 98), the others being merely barbed on one side (Fig. 99). A rounded pebble of coarse red sandstone, battered into a cheese-like form, by being used as a hammer (Fig. 100), was also found. All these articles bring the palæolithic inhabitants of Kent’s Hole into relation with those of the caves and rock-shelters of the south of France, to be described in the next chapter.
(D.) The cave-earth rested on a compact, dark red breccia composed of angular fragments of limestone and pebbles of sandstone embedded in a sandy calcareous paste, identical in constitution with the fragments of the older breccia discovered in the cave-earth. It has furnished bones of bears, and four flint implements. The cave-earth, C, and the breccia, E, seem to stand to one another in an inverse ratio as regards thickness: where the former was thin, the latter was sometimes as much as twelve feet thick. From this relation, as well as from the imbedded fragments of the latter, it may be concluded that the former is the more modern, and that in the interval between their accumulation the latter had been, to a considerable extent, broken up.
There is very good reason for the belief, that before any of the present cave-earth was introduced, Kent’s Hole had been filled nearly to the roof by an older cave accumulation, now represented by the undisturbed breccia and the included fragments. In a portion of the cave termed the “gallery,” there is a sheet of stalagmite, extending overhead from wall to wall, and constituting a ceiling that reaches from wall to wall, without further support than that offered by its own cohesion. Above it, in the limestone rock, there is a considerable alcove. This branch of the cavern, therefore, is divided into three stories or flats, that below the floor occupied with cave-earth, that between the floor and the ceiling entirely unoccupied, and that above the ceiling also without a deposit of any kind. For such a sheet of stalagmite to have been formed it is absolutely necessary for the cave to have been filled up to its level with materials of some kind, just as it is necessary for the formation of a film of ice that it should be crystallized from the surface of water. We may, therefore, infer that Kent’s Hole, like Brixham, was originally filled up to the level of the ceiling (see Fig. 95, E), then that the contents were swept out, with the exception of the breccia, and lastly, that the present cave-earth was introduced. The occurrence of the remains of bear, and of flint implements, in this breccia also proves that man and bears were living in the district, while it was being accumulated, probably by the action of the floods to which, from time to time, the cave was subjected. All the flint implements in the breccia are of the ruder and larger form which is presented by those from the pleistocene deposits of the Somme, Seine, and the rivers of the south and east of England.
While engaged in the identification of the mammals in 1869, with Mr. W. A. Sanford, I detected splinters of bears’ canines, from the cave-earth, remarkable for their density, crystalline structure, and semi-conchoidal fracture, which were in the same mineral state as those from the older breccia. One of these had been fashioned into a flake after its mineralization, and presented an edge chipped by use. The tooth from which it was struck was, probably, imbedded and mineralized in the older breccia, then washed out of it, and afterwards chosen for the manufacture of an implement. It was already fossil and altered in structure in the palæolithic age.
The most remarkable animal discovered in the cave, by the Rev. J. MacEnery, is the Machairodus latidens,213 or large lion-like animal, armed with double-edged canines, in shape like the blade of a sabre, and with two serrated edges. Five canines and two incisors were dug out of the cave-earth, C, in the Wolf’s Passage, along with vast quantities of bones and teeth of the mammoth, rhinoceros, Irish elk, horse, and hyæna. One of the canines is represented in Figs. 101, 102, which are taken from one of the original plates drawn for Dr. Buckland, and now in the Museum of the Torquay Natural History Society. The two incisors, Figs. 103, 104, 105, are also characterised by their serrated edges. A third was discovered by the exploration committee in the same spot, in 1872, scarcely to be distinguished from that in Figs. 103, 104, which finally dispelled the scepticism of some eminent naturalists as to whether any of these teeth had been obtained in the cave by the Rev. J. MacEnery.
The Machairodus latidens has been found in pleistocene strata in two localities in France: in a deposit of diluvium, near Puy, by M. Aymard, and in the cavern of Baume in the Jura, considered by M. Lartet to be of preglacial age.214 In the latter it was associated with the horse, ox, wild-boar, elephant, a non-tichorine species of rhinoceros, the cave-bear, and the spotted hyæna. In the autumn of 1873, I met with proof that the animal also lived in France in the pleiocene period. M. Lortet, the Director of the Museum of Natural History, at Lyons, called my attention to a canine, in the Palais des Beaux Arts, which coincides exactly in all its dimensions with one of those from Kent’s Hole. It was found at Chagny (Saône et Loire) near Dijon, along with Mastodon arvernensis, the Etruscan or megarhine species of rhinoceros, horse, beaver and hyæna, somewhat resembling that from the Crag (Hyæna antiqua) of Suffolk described by Mr. Lankester. The species, therefore, is pleiocene, and it belongs to a genus which is widely distributed in the meiocene strata of Europe and North America, as well as in the pleiocene of Europe.
To what era in the complicated history of Kent’s Hole is this animal to be assigned? The more ancient, or the more modern? The evidence on this point is, to a certain extent, contradictory. On the one hand it is a pleiocene species, belonging to a group of animals that inhabited Europe before the lowering of the temperature caused the invasion of the arctic mammalia from the north and the east: it is moreover of a distinctly southern type. In the teeth marks on the incisors, Figs. 103, 104, 105, as well as on the canines, we have unmistakeable traces of the presence of the hyæna; and since the spotted hyæna abounds in the cave, to its teeth the marks in question may probably be referred. It seems, therefore, probable that the animal inhabited Devonshire during an early stage of the pleistocene period, before the arctic invaders had taken full possession of the valley of the English Channel, and of the low grounds which now lie within the 100-fathom line off the Atlantic shore of Western France. There must necessarily have been a swinging to and fro of animal life over the great, fertile low-lying region, which is now submerged (see Map, Fig. 126); and before the temperature of France had been sufficiently lowered to exterminate or drive out the southern forms, it is most natural to suppose that in warm seasons some of the southern mammalia would find their way northwards, and especially a formidable carnivore such as the machairodus. The extreme rarity of its remains forbids the hypothesis that it was a regular inhabitant of Britain during the pleistocene age.
On the other hand, the recent discovery of a second incisor in the uppermost portion of the cave-earth, in July 1872, in the same condition as the remains usually found, and associated with the bones and teeth of hyæna, horse, and bear, is considered by Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Pengelly proof of the animal having lived during the deposition of the later cave-earth, or in the later stage of the pleistocene. The condition of a bone, however, is a very fallacious guide to its antiquity, and although the fragments of the older contents of the cave are in a different mineral state, it is improbable that the ossiferous contents of so large a cave should have been mineralized exactly in the same way. Nor is an appeal to its perfect state conclusive, since several teeth of bear, which I have examined from the breccia, are equally perfect.
The view of the high antiquity of machairodus in Kent’s Hole derives support from the discovery of Rhinoceros megarhinus at Oreston, a species which is very abundant in the Italian pleiocene strata, and not uncommon in those of France,—a species with its headquarters in the south, but ranging as far north as Norfolk in the early stage of the pleistocene age, represented by the forest bed of Cromer, and that lived in the valley of the Thames, while the gravel-beds of Crayford and Grays Thurrock were being deposited by the ancient river. The occurrence of either of these animals in a cave is exceptional, and the presence of both in caves on the edge of the great plain extending southwards from the present coastline of Devon, seems to me to imply that both were open during the early stage of the pleistocene, while the pleiocene mammalia were retreating before the southward advance of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, spotted hyæna, reindeer, and their congeners, at a time anterior to the lowering of the temperature that culminated in the glacial period. For these reasons it seems to me probable that the machairodus belongs to an early rather than a late stage in the history of Kent’s Hole.
There is an important point of resemblance between the mode of the occurrence of the machairodus in Kent’s Hole, and of the megarhine rhinoceros at Oreston. The remains of both were met with only in one spot, and were not scattered through the chambers and passages. It may have happened that in the physical changes which those caves have undergone, both were preserved in a fissure like that described in the Uphill cave (p. 294), and that subsequently they dropped down and became imbedded in a newer deposit. In fixing the age of strata in caves it seems to me that the zoological evidence is of far greater weight than that of mere position, which may be the result of accidental circumstances.
The caves of Ireland would probably afford as rich a fauna as those of Britain, had they been explored with equal care. In one at Shandon, near Dungarvan, Waterford, remains of the brown bear (U. arctos) reindeer, horse, and mammoth were discovered in 1859, by Mr. Brenan.216 The first of these animals became extinct in Ireland before the historic period, while it survived in Britain at least as late as the Roman occupation.
The cave-bear is also recorded by Dr. Carte,217 from the same place, but the thigh bone assigned to it seems to me to belong to the brown, or common species. The mammoth, so abundant in Britain, has only been discovered in two other localities in Ireland, at Whitechurch near Dungarvan, and at Magherry near Belturbet.218
The range of these animals over Great Britain and Ireland in the pleistocene age enables us to realize the ancient physical geography, which will be treated in the next and following chapters as part of the general question of the physical condition of north-western Europe at that time.