Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_; superscripts are indicated by carets: 4^e. CAVE HUNTING. [Illustration] [Illustration: _Fig. 1._ _Fig. 2._ _Fig. 3._ _Fig. 4._ _Fig. 5._ _Fig. 6._ _Fig. 7._ _Fig. 8._ C. F. Kell Lath. London F.C. ENAMELS FROM THE VICTORIA CAVE. p98. London; Macmillan & C^o. 1874.] CAVE HUNTING, RESEARCHES ON THE EVIDENCE OF CAVES RESPECTING THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF EUROPE BY W. BOYD DAWKINS, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.S.A., _Curator of the Museum and Lecturer in Geology in The Owens College, Manchester_. _ILLUSTRATED BY COLOURED PLATE AND WOODCUTS._ London: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1874. [_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved._] LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL. TO THE BARONESS BURDETT COUTTS, THE FOUNDER OF THE SCHOLARSHIPS FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, This Work is Dedicated, AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT FROM HER FIRST SCHOLAR. PREFACE. The exploration of caves is rapidly becoming an important field of inquiry, and their contributions to our knowledge of the early history of the sojourn of men in Europe are daily increasing in value and in number. Since the year 1823, when Dr. Buckland published his famous work, the “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,” no attempt has been made to correlate, and bring into the compass of one work, the crude mass of facts which have been recorded in nearly every country in Europe. In this volume I have attempted to bring the history of cave-exploration down to the knowledge of to-day, and to put its main conclusions before my readers in one connected and continuous narrative. Since Dr. Buckland wrote, the momentous discovery of human relics along with the extinct animals in caves and river deposits has revolutionised the current ideas as to the antiquity and condition of man; and works of art of a high order, showing a familiarity with nature and an aptitude for the delineation of the forms of animals by no means despicable, have been discovered in the caves of Britain, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, that were the dwellings of the primeval European hunters of reindeer and mammoths. The discoveries in Kent’s Hole and in the caves of Belgium led to those in the caves of Brixham and Wookey Hole, and finally to those of Auvergne and the south of France, as well as of Germany and Switzerland.