Caves have been used by man, and the domestic animals living under his protection, from the earliest times recorded by history down to the present day. Those penetrating the rugged precipices of Palestine, we read in the Old Testament, served both for habitation and for burial, and, from the notices which are scattered through the early Greek writers, we may conclude that those of Greece were used for dwelling-places. The story of the Cyclops proves that they were also used as folds for goats. The name of Troglodytes, given to many peoples of the most remote antiquity, implies that there was a time in the history of mankind when Pliny’s statement “specus erat pro domibus” was strictly true (“Hist. Nat.” I. v. c. 56). The caves of Africa have been places of retreat from the remotest antiquity down to the French conquest of Algeria, and in 1845 several hundred Arabs were suffocated in those of Dahra by the smoke of a fire kindled at the entrance by Marshal (then Colonel) Pelissier. Dr. Livingstone alludes in his recent letters to the vast caves of Central Africa, which offer refuge to whole tribes with their cattle and household stuff. In France, according to M. Desnoyers, there are at the present time whole villages, including the church, to be found in the rock, which are merely caves modified, extended, and altered by the hand of man. The caves of the Dordogne were inhabited in the middle ages. Floras writes that the Aquitani, “callidum genus in speluncas se recipiebant, Cæsar jussit includi,”[2] and the same caves afforded shelter to the inhabitants of the same region in the wars of King Pepin against the last Duke of Aquitaine. In this country a small cave in Cheddar Pass was occupied till within the last few years. The caves in the northern counties are stated by Gildas to have offered a refuge to the Brit-Welsh inhabitants of Britain during the raids of the Picts and Scots; and in the year 1745 those of Yorkshire were turned to the same purpose during the invasion of the Pretender. We might reasonably expect to find in caves turned to these uses objects left behind, which would tell us something of the manners and customs of their possessors, and light up the catalogue of battles and intrigues of which history generally consists. The results obtained from the Brit-Welsh group of caves, treated in the third chapter, show that this hitherto neglected branch of the inquiry is not without value to the historian. Caves containing remains of this kind may be conveniently termed historic, because they may be brought into relation with history. It must, however, be carefully remarked that the term does not relate to history _in general_, but to that _in particular_ of each country which happens to be under investigation. The misapprehension of this has caused great confusion, and many mistakes in archæological classification and reasoning.