again, the value of the evidence turns on the point as to whether the strata inside the caves are Glacial deposits in situ or have been derived from their denudation. Both Prof. Hughes and myself agree in holding the latter view. This may have happened at any period in the Pleistocene age subsequent to their deposition, by the waves of the sea. It seems therefore to me altogether premature to build up any hypothesis on the foundations offered by the discoveries made hitherto in these two sets of caves as to the relation of their contents to the Glacial period. The open caves were undoubtedly inhabited by the wild animals before the Glacial age; but I do not know of any one cave in any part of Europe which has been proved to contain Preglacial or Interglacial mammalia.
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[1] 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. When first discovered it seemed to me too equivocal a specimen to be identified with absolute certainty; and therefore it was omitted from my report to the British Association in 1873. Prof. Busk (Anthropological Journ. iii. p. 392) also, to whom it was submitted, considered it equivocal, then "was induced to think that it might be elephantine," and ultimately concluded, from its correspondence with an abnormal and unique recent human fibula, that it is human. Since this identification the numerous Bear's fibulæ from Windy Knoll which I have examined seem to me to throw additional light on the fragment, and to render it very probable that it is ursine. I am not prepared to say that I can identify it with any one ursine fibula; but, taking into account the great difference in size and form in that bone, and the fact that one fossil Bear's fibula differs from another as much as or more than this one does, it may probably be referred to one or another of the fossil Bears U. spelæus or U. ferox, of which the remains found in the Victoria Cave are of gigantic size. On this point I would remark that a fragment of ursine fibula, from the cavern of Lozère, in the British Museum very nearly comes up to that of Victoria in size, measuring in circumference 2⋅0 inches as compared with 2⋅2 of the latter. The Victoria fibula differs far
- ↑ Tiddeman, 'Nature,' 1876, p. 505; see also Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1875, p. 173:—"In the opinion of yonr reporter, the Craven savage, who lived before the Great Ice-sheet and before the Great Submergence, may form another of the many strong ties which bind together the sciences of Geology and Anthropology." Geikie, 'Ice-Age, '1st edit. p. 510:—"The interest of this discovery (i.e. of the fibula) consists in the fact that the deposit from which the bone was obtained is overlaid, as Mr. Tiddeman has shown, 'by a bed of stiff Glacial clay containing ice-scratched boulders.' Here then is direct proof that Man lived in England prior to the last Interglacial period."
