Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
Four years after the appearance of Dr. Rigollot's paper, a sudden
change of opinion was brought about in England respecting the probable
co-existence, at a former period, of Man and many extinct mammalia, in
consequence of the results obtained from a careful exploration of a cave
at Brixham, near Torquay, in Devonshire. As the new views very generally
adopted by English geologists had no small influence on the subsequent
progress of opinion in France, I shall interrupt my account of the
researches made in the valley of the Somme, by a brief notice of those
which were carried on in 1858 in Devonshire with more than usual care
and scientific method. Dr. Buckland, in his celebrated work, entitled
"Reliquiae Diluvianae," published in 1823, in which he treated of the
organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and "diluvial gravel" in
England, had given a clear statement of the results of his own original
observations, and had declared that none of the human bones or stone
implements met with by him in any of the caverns could be considered
to be as old as the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds. Opinions in
harmony with this conclusion continued until very lately to be generally
in vogue in England; although about the time that Schmerling was
exploring the Liege caves, the Reverend Mr. McEnery, a Catholic priest,
residing near Torquay, had found in a cave one mile east of that town,
called "Kent's Hole," in red loam covered with stalagmite, not only
bones of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, hippopotamus, cave-bear,
and other mammalia, but several remarkable flint tools, some of which he
supposed to be of great antiquity, while there were also remains of Man
in the same cave of a later date.*
(* The manuscript and plates prepared for a joint memoir on
Kent's Hole, by Mr. McEnery and Dr. Buckland, have recently
been published by Mr. Vivian of Torquay, from which, as well
as from some of the unprinted manuscript, I infer that Mr.
McEnery only refrained out of deference to Dr. Buckland from
declaring his belief in the contemporaneousness of certain
flint implements of an antique type and the bones of extinct
animals. Two of these implements from Kent's Hole, figured
in Plate 12 of the posthumous work above alluded to,
approach very closely in form and size to the common
Abbeville implements.)
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