A PLEISTOCENE CAVE DEPOSIT OF WESTERN 



MARYLAND. 



By J. W. Gidi.ey, 

 Assistant Curator of Fossil Mammals, United States National Museum. 



[With G plates.] 



Caves are known in almost all portions of the globe. They usu- 

 ally occur in the softer rock formations of the nature of gypsum, 

 sandstone, and particularly limestone. The peculiar nature of lime- 

 stone, which is usually hard enough to be very resistant, but is slowly 

 soluble in the presence of certain acids taken from the air by falling 

 rain, make it especially susceptible to the development of under- 

 ground caverns. These sometimes attain enormous size and usually 

 follow the general lines of stratification or some fault or fissure 

 where surface waters may find more ready access. Thus in limestone 

 regions caverns, or caves both small and large, are likely to abound, 

 and in certain localities occur in great numbers. Cave deposits con- 

 taining bones of extinct animals, however, are comparatively rare in 

 America, and their discovery, through the very nature of their oc- 

 currence, is usually purely accidental. It was through one of these 

 accidents that such a cave deposit was discovered a few years ago in 

 the vicinity of Cumberland, Maryland. 



In the spring of 1912 there was brought to the United States 

 National Museum, for inspection and determination, a portion of a 

 lower jaw recognized as belonging to an extinct and hitherto un- 

 known species of the wolf kind, together with a few other fossil 

 bones which had been picked up from the bottom of a newly exca- 

 vated railroad cut about 1 miles northwest of the city of Cumber- 

 land, Maryland. These specimens had been sent in and were after- 

 wards presented by Mr. Raymond Armbruster, a local amateur 

 collector of Cumberland, and his uncle Mr. George Roeder, of Swet- 

 nan, Virginia. The fossils at once aroused interest, and on invita- 

 tion of these gentlemen, who reported good prospects of obtaining 

 more such specimens from this recent excavation, a personal inspec- 

 tion was made. The cut is situated on the south side of Wills Creek 

 Valley, where the tracks of the Western Maryland Railway pass 

 westward through a low limestone ridge, or spur, to enter Cash 

 Valley. The material from which the fossil bones had been taken 



281 



