oraries, and to subdue the then vast wildernesses of the
eastern continent, and they correspond with the Biblical
characteristics of antediluvian man.

Among caves of driftage may be classed some of those near Liege, in
Belgium, and, partially at least, those of Kent's Hole and Brixham, in
England. In these only disarticulated remnants of human skeletons, or
more frequently only flint implements, some of them of doubtful
character, have been found. In my "Story of the Earth," I have taken
the carefully explored Kent's Cavern of Torquay as a typical example,
and have condensed its phenomena as described by Mr. Pengelly. I now
repeat this description, with some important emendations suggested by
that gentleman in more recent reports and in private correspondence.

The somewhat extensive and ramifying cavern of Kent's Hole is an
irregular excavation, evidently due partly to fissures or joints in
limestone rock, and partly to the erosive action of water enlarging
such fissures into chambers and galleries. At what time it was
originally cut we do not know, but it must have existed as a cavern at
the close of the Pliocene or beginning of the Post-pliocene period,
since which time it has been receiving a series of deposits which have
quite filled up some of its smaller branches.

First and lowest, according to Mr. Pengelly, of the deposits as yet
known, is a "breccia," or mass of broken and rounded stones, with
hardened red clay filling the interstices. Some of the stones are of
the rock which forms the roof and walls of the cave, but the greater
number, especially the rounded ones, are from more distant parts of
the surrounding country. Many are fragments of grit from the Devonian
beds of adjacent hills. There are also fragments of stalagmite from an
old crust broken up when the breccia was deposited, and possibly
belonging to Pliocene times. In this mass, the depth of which is
unknown, are numerous bones, nearly all of one kind of animal, the
cave bear or bears, for there may be more than one species--creatures
which seem to have lived in Western Europe from the close of the
Pliocene down to the modern period. They must have been among the
earliest and most permanent tenants of Kent's Hole at a time when its
lower chambers were still filled with water. Teeth of a lion and of
the common fox also occur in this deposit, but rarely. Next above the
breccia is a floor of "stalagmite," or stony carbonate of lime,
deposited from