ERNEST INGERSOLL.
an extinct species of Eu ropean bear closely allied to the living grizzly, but attaining a large size. Its remains are found in bone-beds in caverns, whence the name. The habits of the animal were probably not different from those of modern bears. The cave-bear of South America is a different animal. Both species are found in the larger caverns of North and South America. See BEARS.
This topic is nat urally divisible into two parts — first, the pre historic aspect, and, second, the modern human occupation. The prehistoric use of shelters and subterranean chambers by the primitive savages, often called was incidental to human existence before civilization, and is fully treated in the article STONE-AGE. The present article therefore avoids that phase of cave history, and is confined to the use of inv. derground chambers, natural or artificial, by civilized mankind for dwellings, refuges, wor shipping places or sepulture.
Caverns naturally occur in limestone regions,or where soft layers of sandstone or volcanic debris alternate with harder layers (see CAVE), and are usually dry, well-ventilated, of a fairly even temperature throughout the year, and often contain streams of running water. They are, therefore, suitable enough for human habi tation, and often are really attractive. It is not surprising, then, that from the earliest times caves have been adopted as human residences and storehouses, and that they continue to be so utilized in various parts of the Old World. In the Western hemisphere this practice has never been followed, the occasional exceptions here and there being negligible. The reason is that the civilization of both North and South America is an important one. The early immigrants were men and women used to building houses, and finding in the New World plenty of room and materials for house build ing had no need of, and felt no call to, cave-life; nor have they been driven to it by fear.
The people of the Old World, from the Mediterranean to the China Sea, on the other hand, inherited the practice from remote an tiquity, and maintained it under the pressure of semi-barbarous and crowded social conditions, poverty, danger from incessant wars and robber raids, until now in many places residence in artificial or modified caves is a matter of economy, or choice, or both. This is par
ticularly true of southwestern Europe, and es pecially of France, where great areas of lime stone, sandstone, and volcanic breccia underlie the soil. Through these the rivers, especially in the valleys of the Loire, Dordogne and Garonne, have cut deep channels with precipi tous sides. Here scores of natural caves have been human habitations from prehistoric until recent times— some even yet furnishing hu man homes. Baring-Gould. pictures a well known example that has been explored by antiquaries: "At the bottom of all the deposits [constitut ing its floor-layers] were discovered the re mains of the very earliest inhabitants, with their hearths about which they sat in nudity and split bones to extract the marrow, trimmed flints, worked horn, necklaces of pierced wolf and bear teeth; then potsherds, formed by hand long after the invention of the wheel; higher up were the arms and utensils of the Bronze Age, and the weights of nets. Above these came the remains of the Iron Age, and wheel-turned crocks. A still higher stratum surrendered a weight of a scale stamped with an effigy of the crusading King, Saint Louis (1235-70), and finally francs bearing the profile of... Leopold [of Belgium]." Such a record of almost continuous occupa tion might be multiplied by hundreds; and in many cases such ancient resorts have been enlarged and improved. The same is true of northern Africa and northern Asia.
We have to do more especially with arti ficial caves dug out by men for occupation in one or another way. Thousands of habitations, stables and workshops were cut in the hillsides of Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire, in Eng land, and many were occupied until, within a few years, the local health authorities cleared them out. Holy Austin's rock in Shropshire, a mass of red sandstone, is honeycombed with habitations, whose neatly framed windows and doors are cut through the rock wall left for a front, and which even now are greatly liked by their tenants.