epulchre containing the remains of
sixteen individuals, of the second or diminutive Lappish race before
referred to. The door of the cave had been closed by these people with
a slab of stone, and in front was a hearth for funeral feasts, built
on the deposits of the mammoth age, and containing bones of animals
all recent or now living in Belgium, and without any traces of the
bones of the extinct quadrupeds. This burial-place belonged to the
Neocosmic yet prehistoric race which replaced the Palaeocosmic men of
the mammoth age.

What is the absolute antiquity of the Palaeocosmic age in Europe? We
have no monumental or historical chronology to answer this question,
but only the measures of time furnished by the accumulation of
deposits, by the deposition of stalagmite, by the gradual extinction
of animals, and by the erosion of valleys and other physical changes.
These somewhat loose measures have been applied in various ways, but
the tendency of geologists, from the prevalence of uniformitarian
views, and the prejudice created by familiarity with the long times of
previous geologic periods, has been to assign to them too great rather
than too little value, both as measures of time and as indicating a
remote antiquity.

With reference to the accumulation of deposits, whether derived from
disintegration of the roof and walls of the cave, introduced by land
floods or river inundations or by the residence of man, their rate is
of very difficult estimation. Loose stones fallen from the roof, as in
the case of Kent's Cave, would give a fair measure of time if we could
be sure that the climate had continued uniform, and that there had
been no violent earthquakes. Mr. Pengelly has, however, hopelessly
given up this kind of evidence. Where, as in the case of many of these
caves, land floods and river inundations have entered, these may have
been frequent or separated by long intervals of time, and they may
have been of great or small amount. Where, for instance, as in one of
the Belgian caves, there are six beds of ossiferous mud, but for the
fact that five layers of stalagmite separate them we might not have
known whether they represent six annual inundations, or floods
separated by many centuries from each other.

In the case of the Victoria Cave at Settle, Dawkins, reasoning from
the accumulation of two feet of detritus over British remains that may
be supposed to be 1200 years old, gives a basis which would at the
same ra