We have stated that numerous caves have been explored in England, Belgium, and several other countries. We shall not undertake to give with regard to each details which would only be a reproduction of those which precede. We therefore confine ourselves to mentioning the most celebrated of the caverns belonging to the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth.
In England we have the Kent's Hole and Brixham caverns, near Torquay in Devonshire, the latter of which is many hundred yards in extent; the caves of the Gower peninsula, in Glamorganshire (South Wales), which have been carefully studied within the last few years by Messrs. Falconer and Wood; in these were found flint instruments along with bones of the _Elephas antiquus_ and the _Rhinoceros hemitæchus_, species which were still more ancient than the mammoth and the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_; those of Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, explored by Dr. Buckland, the geologist; those near Wells in Somersetshire, Wokey Hole, Minchin Hole, &c.
We must mention, in the north of Italy, the caves of Chiampo and Laglio, on the edge of the Lake of Como, in which, just as at Vergisson, fragments of rough pottery have been discovered, indicating some degree of progress in the manufacture; also the caves in the neighbourhood of Palermo, and especially those of San Ciro and Macagnone.
In the last-mentioned cave, in the midst of an osseous _breccia_ which rose to the roof, Dr. Falconer collected flint instruments, splinters of bone, pieces of baked clay and wood charcoal mixed up with large land-shells (_Helix vermiculata_), in a perfect state of preservation, horses' teeth, and the excrements of the hyæna, all cemented together in a deposit of carbonate of lime. In a lower bed were found the bones of various species of the hippopotamus, the _Elephas antiquus_, and other great mammals.
Lastly, Spain, Algeria, Egypt, and Syria also present to our notice caves belonging to the Stone Age.
In the New World various bone-caverns have been explored. We must especially mention Brazil, in which country Lund searched no less than eight hundred caves of different epochs, exhuming in them a great number of unknown animal species. In one of these caves, situated near the Lake of Sumidouro, Lund found some human bones which had formed a part of thirty individuals of different ages, and were "in a similar state of decomposition, and in similar circumstances to the bones of various extinct species of animals."