DEEPDALE CAVE. Qy 



fall, and in consequence of this I have had some very narrow 

 escapes." The lowest of these cavities which he has explored 

 always contain water, no less than twenty-five feet in rainy 

 weather. At such times the surplus water issues into the valley 

 as a spring at the foot of the slope below the entrance of the 

 cave; "but," remarks Mr. Millett, "I have never at anytime 

 seen one-twentieth part running into these cavities as springs up 

 in the valley outside." Where he has dug he has found that this 

 accumulation of dedris is covered, first, with a layer of smaller 

 stones mixed and cemented with stalagmite ; then, above this is a 

 seam of crystallised stalagmite, varying from one foot in thickness ; 

 overlying this is a bed of clay and sand, with stones from four to 

 six feet thick ; then layers of loose stones, gravel, and thin 

 stalagmite ; and, above all, a blackish soil containing Romano- 

 British remains. All these deposits are indicated in the transverse 

 section of the second chamber. 



The first chamber has the important point of difference from 

 the second of being drilled (so to speak) out of the sohd lime- 

 stone rock, a circumstance which, no doubt, is answerable for the 

 difference of level of the two floors. To judge from Mr, Salt's 

 excavations in this chamber, the following sequence of deposits 

 seems to be general. In descending order, there are (a) a dark 

 surface-soil containing bones, bronze objects, pottery, etc., (d) a 

 sheet of stalagmite, and (c) a yellowish red cave-earth mixed with 

 stones, but, so far as it has been penetrated, devoid of objects 

 of human manufacture. In the anterior half of this chamber 

 Mr. Salt found that the surface soil was about one foot in thick- 

 ness, and the stalagmite about eighteen inches, while near the 

 back the latter attained a thickness of even three feet. Thick as 

 this stalagmite in the back portion of the chamber was, and, there- 

 fore, long as it must have been in formation, there were evident 

 traces of man's presence beneath it in the shape of a seam of 

 dark earth highly charged with charcoal, and varying from three 

 to six inches in thickness. 



The soil throughout the cave is the tenacious pasty clay known 

 as " fox-earth," invariably found in caves and fissures of limestone 



