tinuous, or that during their absence these rock-shelters were not the haunts of predaceous animals, for which indeed they are far less well adapted than the sinuous caves.
In attempting to correlate the works of man from Kent's Cavern with those from the French caves, we find in the first place that implements of the types usually characteristic of the River-gravels have been found in about a dozen French caves, of which a list has been given by M. E. D'Acy,[1] and, secondly, that the harpoons and needle belong to the age of La Madelaine, though bones engraved with pictorial designs—which are also characteristic of that period—are wanting. Some of the flint implements, however, approximate more closely in character with those of the age of Le Moustier; while the age of Solutré is not so decidedly represented by any of its peculiar forms. If any value attaches to these analogies, there would seem to be reason, on these grounds also, for supposing that the infilling of the cave with the red earth, to say nothing of the breccia at a lower level, was the work of an immensely long lapse of time. The black band, which in part of the cave lay beneath the stalagmite, and contained numerous pieces of charcoal, seems to indicate some more continuous occupancy of the cave by man, than at the time when the red earth was accumulating. Then comes the stalagmite, in which but few remains whether human or otherwise have been found, and these for the most part may have fallen in from higher levels. It seems to indicate a vast period of time, during which the cavern was entirely unfrequented by man or beast, and during which the fauna of the country was undergoing those changes—by the extinction or migration of some forms of mammalian life, and the incoming of others—which is so strongly marked by the difference in the contents of the beds above and below the stalagmite. As concerns this long chapter in the history of human existence the records of the cavern are a blank.
It is, moreover, to be observed that though in Kent's Cavern we have evidence of its occupation by Man more or less continuously from the Acheuléen down to the Magdalénien Age, a space of time embracing nearly all the phases of the Palæolithic Period, there is no sign of any transition to the Neolithic Period, the remains of which first make their appearance after the deposit of the stalagmite.
- ↑ L'Anthropologie, vol. v., 1894, p. 371.
