From W. B. Dawkins   27 August 1871

Dear M^r. Darwin,

I write to tell you of the success which I have had in following up the clue offered by the bones that you sent me from Rhagatt two years ago.¹ Last week we dug out two new caves near the old one which has furnished the platycnemic men, and found traces of the same peculiar race in each.² One had been used as a sepulcre and contained corpses buried in the sitting posture, fragments of coarse ware, flint chips and a most beautiful polished implement of greenstone. The last stamps the neolithic age of the whole series, and renders certain, what in my account I was obliged to leave doubtful.³ All three caves are close to the ridge of limestone from the cracks in which Miss Lloyd obtained the animal-bones.⁴ So far as I know these three cases are the only ones on record of a Neolithic interment in caves in Britain, while that in the cave at Cefn makes a 4^th..⁵

A like flattening of the tibia I observed in a collection of bones made from a cave near Oban, by Prof. Turner of Edinburgh.⁶ I fully believe that this character will turn out to be widely distributed among bones from tumuli, and that taken in connection with cranial form, it will show that the same race spread over Britain and North France during the Neolithic age.

I write this because I thought that you would like to know to what sort of result your clue is leading.

Next week we recommence the Yorkshire Caves⁷ and I hope to send you a good account of our work. We are certain to get some traces of the state of things during the blank which separates the departure of the Roman legions from the conquest by the Angles.