William Boyd Dawkins

“ B. No proof of Pre- or Interglacial Cave-Man in Britain.
The question naturally arises, When did Man first appear the cave-fauna? Messrs. Tiddeman and James Geikie [12] find an answer in the discovery of "a human bone or fibula," which "was certainly found beneath Glacial clay in the Victoria Cave." That this clay is Glacial is, as I have shown above, a matter of opinion; nor am I by any means satisfied that the fragment of shaft without articulations of so variable a bone is really beyond all doubt human. ”

“ Whether, however, the Creswell tooth was collected or not, its mineral condition agreeing with that of the other associated teeth forbids the supposition that it was obtained from the Forest-bed, or from any Pliocene strata on the Continent, in which the remains, so far as I have yet seen, are in a totally different state of preservation and of a different colour. As the evidence stands, it is in favour of the animal having been a contemporary of man in the neighbourhood. ”

“ On descending through a small hole, just big enough to admit a spare and agile explorer, you find yourself in a lofty chamber; and at the further end of this all further passage is barred by a large conical talus, or shoot, of angular blocks of limestone mingled with clay, which has fallen through an aperture blocked up by the apex of the cone. In all probability the vertical shaft (fig. 1) under the ossiferous deposit in Windy Knoll ends in a similar cave, and has been blocked up in a similar fashion by the slow wearing away of the limestone. ”

“ In the pleistocene caves of Germany it is found abundantly, with the Reindeer, Cave-lion, and Hyæna, at least as far south as Gailenreuth, in Bavaria, where it was first discovered by Dr. Goldfuss. It is figured and described from the caves of Belgium by Dr. Buckland's great rival, Dr. Schmerling. We might therefore naturally expect to find the animal ranging over our island at a time when it formed part of the mainland of Europe, and offered free access to the same animals (the Reindeer, the Lemming, and the Horse) as those which still furnish food to the living Glutton in Siberia. ”

“ IV. Condition of Fossil Remains in the Creswell Caves.
The bones, antlers, and teeth in these two caverns are divisible into three distinct groups, so far as relates to their condition:— (1) those which are gnawed by the Hyænas; (2) those which have been broken up and, in some cases, burnt by Man; (3) those which have been attacked by the carbonic acid in the rainwater which has percolated through the cave-earth and red sand. ”

“ The fossil carnivore was larger than the living, probably because in pleistocene times the competition for life was not so keen as it is now among the mammalia. Man in those early times had not increased and multiplied to such a degree as to upset the œconomy of nature, by driving the wild animals away from their feeding-grounds, and robbing the carnivores of a large portion of their food. ”

“ Busk, whose absence through indisposition this evening I regret, has requested me to say on his part that he "should not himself be inclined to rest or to base the existence of Preglacial Man on a fragment of bone like that, about which it is impossible that some doubt should not exist." ”

“ The remains of the animals were also, on the whole, more perfect in the red sand than in the cave-earth, and not so much gnawed by the hyænas.
We may also observe that here, as in Wookey Hole, hyænas, rhinoceroses, horses, and reindeer are most abundant among the lower animals; while the traces of man, represented mainly by flint and quartzite implements, being practically indestructible, stand at the head of the list. ”

“ The glacial series of events [14] is one thing, and the zoological [15] altogether another thing. The Pleistocene fauna is not divided from that which went before and that which followed after by a barrier of ice.
The Palæolithic hunters of the Creswell Caves, judged by the zoological standard, belong to the late Pleistocene age, since the numerous remains of Reindeer prove that the Arctic mammalia were then in possession of the land. ”

“ He remarked that traces of man's existence have been found along with such remains, and in Italy a human skull occurred in strata containing Elephas meridionalis. In the lignite of Wetzikon thin wooden stakes have been met with, sharpened at one end, and bound round with what seemed to be strips of bark, which, however, had proved to be small segments of similar sticks split radially in the direction of the medullary rays. Prof. Rütimeyer added that traces of man have been thus discovered in true Pliocene deposits on both sides of the Alps. ”

“ With these exceptions, I do not know of the teeth of any carnivore with which those of the Glutton under consideration can be confounded.
The following Table shows the relation of the lower jaw of the Glutton from Plas Heaton to those found in the caves of Germany, and to a recent specimen preserved in the British Museum. The Welsh fossil in every dimension is larger than any of the rest, and must have belonged to an animal proportionally more robust than any of the others. ”

“ Association of Remains.—The bones and teeth of the animals from the ossiferous yellow clay are, for the most part, perfect, and had been buried in their natural positions. The limb-bones of bison, for example, and of reindeer had their proper articular surfaces together, and the sesamoids, tarsals, and carpals in place. The dorsal vertebræ of a reindeer were found in one continuous chain. ”

“ The premolar and molar series, also, are crowded together in a very short alveolar space, and occupy the upper and outer margin of the jaw, instead of occupying its superior surface, as in the majority of the carnivores. The peculiar wrinkled pattern of the enamel separates the teeth at once from those of any carnivore which are likely to be confounded with them, except the Hyæna, which is put out of court by the larger size and different form of all its teeth except the upper incisor 3, and the first upper premolar. ”

“ In the early Pleistocene, as, for example, in the Lower Brickearths of the Thames Valley, the animal abounded in Britain. It retreated before the advance of the Reindeer as the temperature became lowered, and it did not again appear in force till after the close of the Pleistocene age.
Woolly Rhinoceros.—The adult Woolly Rhinoceros is represented by 145 teeth, the young by 108. All these but three were discovered near the cave-earth.
Horse.—Most of the teeth of Horses belong to adults ”

“ The Lion (Felis spelæa) .—A canine, a lower true molar, a gnawed tibia, and 8 bones of the feet, belong to the Lion. The following measurements of metatarsal bones compared with those given by Mr. Sanford and myself in the monograph on Felis spelæa (Palæont. Soc. part 1, p. 25) imply that the animal was intermediate, in point of size, between the large variety of the caves and the smaller form now prevailing in Africa and India.
Comparative Measurements of Metatarsal 3 of Lion.
The Leopard (F. pardus) .—One ectocuneiform from the cave-earth is undistinguishable from that of a Leopard. ”

“ The Yoredale shales of Mam Tor command the lower ridges of limestone in the immediate neighbourhood; and the heavy rains have spread their weathered fragments over the boundary dividing them from the limestones. Consequently several of the swallow-holes have been lined with impervious clay, which has converted them into pools. One of these is a few yards from Windy Knoll. ”

“ By this last active agent they have sometimes been reduced to very fantastic forms. In some cases the enamel of the tooth is worn away, in others the dentine: many of the antler-tips have been so sharpened by it that they may readily be mistaken for human implements. ”

“ Its southern limit in Asia is the latitude 50°, where it occurs in the Altai. In Europe its southern limit is not clearly defined; but it has steadily retreated northwards as the vast forests of Germany and Poland gradually fell under the axe of the woodman. ”

“ Allen ("On the American Bisons," Memoirs of Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass., iv. no. 10) and the numerous accounts of travellers in the far west, whiten the sides of the drinking-places, and show the former range of the animal over a vast tract from which it has been driven by the hunters. ”

“ The breccia of the previous exploration turned out to be a mere local deposit, which was represented in other parts of the cave by the upper strata of cave-earth. Consequently, in the following list of the vertical range of the animals in the cave, I have classified it with the cave-earth, with which also is included the mottled stratum noted in Mr. ”