498 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. loi 



columns, so closely spaced that only a near approach discloses the 

 presence of a room beyond. Breaking through, we discovered the cat 

 bones on the inner, or blind side of the rock columns. The animal had 

 lain down on its left side on a wet clay floor to die, and the bones had 

 sunk partly into the clay before drippings from a crack in the roof 

 started the slow process of sealing up everything under a layer of 

 calcium carbonate. The rock had accumulated to a thickness of 1 to 3 

 inches on top of the clay, leaving only a few parts projecting above, and 

 these exposed portions were themselves encrusted with a thin spatter 

 deposit about an eighth of an inch or less in thickness. We found that 

 by using hammers and chisels we could remove the rock in plates from 

 the surface of the clay, which was still wet and soft beneath, and that 

 the ends of the bones that projected into the clay were cleaned effec- 

 tively with just a little washing. The other portions, however, were 

 very much more difficult to free from their matrix. On the sugges- 

 tion of Dr. C. S. Piggot, who at that time was executive director of the 

 Committee on Geophysical Sciences of the Research and Development 

 Board of the National Military Establishment, Dr. C. L. Gazin, curator 

 of the division of vertebrate paleontology of the United States Na- 

 tional Museum, came to our assistance and very kindly arranged to 

 have the skeleton cleaned by some of the members of his staff. 



The second discovery was made by us in Saltpeter Cave, just north 

 of Sparta, in White County, Tenn., in the fall of 1947. About half a 

 mile back in the cave, in a large room at least 40 feet high and having a 

 dry, loose, sandy earth floor, we uncovered the second skeleton, about as 

 extensive as the first and in many details conveniently complementary. 

 Since it was not encased in rock, it was easily cleaned, but was very 

 fragile. 



Each individual was intact when originally deposited in the cave, 

 and the situation of each virtually precludes the possibility of the 

 carcass having been washed in from the outside. The first was found 

 in a high upper passage with no entrance large enough for such a body 

 except the one by which we came, and water definitely did not flow 

 that way. The second was found in a dry cave, located several hun- 

 dred feet above the present valley floor, that must have been dry at 

 the time the cat died and probably long before that. (All the caves 

 in the Sparta area have their entrances high up on the sides of the 

 mountains and seem to have been formed at a time when the valley 

 floor was several hundred feet higher than it is today.) Both lo- 

 cations are at least half a mile from the entrances of the caves, too 

 far back for casual migrants, so there is every reason to believe that 

 both cats reached the spots in which we found them under their own 

 power. Very few kinds of animals penetrate caves beyond the twi- 

 light area near the mouth. It is possible, of course, that sick or 

 injured animals wander farther back to die, but it seems much more 



