Br Bavy^s Account of Cole's Cave, Barbadoes. 359 



other specimens^ That the material of them, so Various, was 

 either deposited from water from a state of solution, in con- 

 sequence of the separation of carbonic acid, or was a subsi- 

 dence from water, having been mechanically suspended in it, 

 in a very finely divided state, seems to be unquestionable. 

 The main inference then is, that so many varieties of rock as 

 those mentioned may be formed by deposition and subsidence 

 from water ; the pure white crystalline-like marble by depo- 

 sition of carbonate of lime alone from a state of solution ; 

 that like mountain limestone, by a like deposition, with an ad- 

 mixture of a little sediment of foreign matter ; and the tufa- 

 like kind, or sandstone, from a greater admixture of sediment, 

 and that sediment composed partly of quartz sand, and partly 

 of what I believe to be volcanic ashes. 



Now, as the calcareous deposition and the other deposits 

 are constantly increasing in this cavern, judging from what 

 is now to be witnessed, it requires no great stretch of the 

 imagination to conceive a time, and that not very remotely 

 distant in the future, when the fissure may be completely 

 filled up, and its contents be like the contents of a vein, ac* 

 cording to the old Wernerian hypothesis ; and which, if 

 broken into and quarried, may exhibit in^egular beds of mar- 

 ble in connection with rock having the character of mountain 

 limestone, and other rock having the character of free- 

 stone. In parts of the island where excavations have been 

 made, or natural sections occur, phenomena of the kind are 

 to be witnessed at present. The one seem to elucidate the 

 other. 



As regards the materials entering into the composition of 

 the rocks now forming in the cavern, it is not difficult to find 

 their source. It is unnecessary to point out whence the car'^ 

 bonate of lime is derived ; the worn honey-comb appearance 

 of the calcareous rocks on the higher grounds, at the surface 

 exposed to the action of rain-water holding carbonic acid in 

 solution, obviously explains it. The clay of the cavern is very 

 like the finest portion of the surface soil; and, doubtless, 

 has been washed out of the soil. The particles contained 

 in the tufa-like deposit resembling volcanic ashes, have also 



