[52] Carpenter's Principles of Human Physiology, London, 1881, p. 659. [53] Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 1853, vol. lxxix, p. 360. [54] Idiocy and Imbecility, London, 1877, pp. 216-219. [55] See The Brain as an Organ of Mind, London, 1880, p. 465; also, The Human Brain, London, 1847, pp. 288, 289. [56] Eclectic Magazine, December 14, 1863, p. 428. SPELEOLOGY, OR CAVE EXPLORATION.[57] BY M. E. A. MARTEL. The not very graceful word _speleology_ was composed a few years ago by M. Émile Rivière out of Greek elements, as a translation of the German _Höhlenkunde_, to signify the study of caves. The study claims a place among the sciences, and is, I believe, able to justify its claim. Caves have been subjects of interest and curiosity in all times and countries. In the primitive ages, when palæolithic man was obliged to defend himself against the large Quaternary wild beasts, and did not yet know how to construct cabins, he lived in the most inaccessible caves, or those easiest to close, which he could find. Afterward, when man had advanced in civilization to the neolithic stage, and had somewhat improved tools and arms, having learned to build huts and villages, caves became simply burial places. In the historical periods of antiquity they were transformed into pagan sanctuaries or temporary hiding places in times of revolt, civil war, or invasion. Down to the middle ages and the renascence, they shared this function with abandoned quarries. Through these changes they gradually became objects of popular fear and absurd legend. I have nearly everywhere in France found legendary and profound belief in some monstrous basilisk or dragon in the depths of dark caverns, guarding immense treasures; and woe to the rash adventurer who tried to steal these riches! In short, caves have suffered their vicissitudes; their use as habitations seems to be inversely proportioned to the degree of civilization. The miserable aborigines of Australia have not yet quite abandoned them; and in France the present occupation of the grottoes of Ezy, in the Eure, by some outcast families, who lead a sordid existence in them, indifferent to all social conventions, has recently been cited as an extremely curious anthropological phenomenon. Science, too, has laid its hold on caves only within a little more than a century; for it was not till 1774 that Esper recognized that the large bones taken from the caverns near Baireuth, in Bavaria, were not those of human giants, but of extinct animals, and he called them, they being petrified by limestone, _zoöliths_, or animal-stones; and it was his remarks upon them that drew Cuvier's attention to paleontology.