90 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



cave in ISOB. "This gentleman informed Dr. Adams that there were at that 

 time, enormous lumps of some saline matter scattered over the floor, indi- 

 vidual pieces of which, he was persuaded, would have weighed from one to 

 200 pounds. The whole of this crystalized body must have been an impure 

 sulphate of magnesia, which is still found there, though in small crystals, 

 and only on the sides and in the interstices of the rock, which is owing to all 

 the larger ones having been removed, several wagon loads of which were taken 

 to Frankfort and other places." 



McMurtrie's brief description is of the old ca^e only, the new portion not 

 having been discovered until ISoO. He says that the earth in the old passage 

 "contains about five pounds of the nitrate of lime or magnesia, to the 

 bushel, and is composed of decaying animal and vegetable matter, 

 principally of bats' dung, Avhich may be seen hanging in tufts on everj- rock." 

 From the wording one does not know whether he meant that the bats or the 

 dung clung to the rocks, but probably the former." "Continuing on the main 

 route for some distance further" saj's McMurtrie, "the eye is involuntarily 

 attracted by immense pebbles, weighing from one to five hundred tons, which 

 lie precisely in the middle of it. I say pebbles, because, although they are 

 composed of carbonate of lime, they are as comf)l('tely I'ounded as any fragment 

 of a primitive rock that can be i)roduc('d in a water course." Some one must 

 have needed these "rounded jx'bbles" and removed them from the cave, as I 

 have never seen any signs of them. Continuing, hesajs: "The first serious 

 impediment that presents itself consists in the ceiling or roof of the gallery 

 descending so low as to touch the floor, leaving a small arched opening, 

 through which, whoever wishes to penetrate further, must crawl and scuffle, 

 not on his hands and knees, for that is impossible from the shallowness of 

 the arch, but, literally speaking, on his l>elly. This spot has been styled by 

 the guide, and not inaptly, the bat's burial jjhice, the soil on which you creep, 

 to the depth of a foot, being composed entirely of their remains." 



After reaching the hirgc room at the end of the old cave Avhich he calls 

 the "Chaml)er of Fountains," and descanting upon the wonders of what is 

 now known as the Pillar of the Constitution, McMurtrie says: "I think that 

 T may safely assert that the cave bears along with it most unequivocal proof 

 of its having originated in an earthquake, which has split the rock, and opened 

 a passage for a superincumbent body of water that has rushed in and filled 

 a part, if not the whole of tlie cavity." 



In Vol. I, "Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian 

 Society," i)ublished in 1S20, is an Ajjjjendi.x entitled "Account of a (Ireat and 

 very Extraordinary Cave in Indiana, in a letter from the owner to a gentle- 

 man in Frankfort, Kentucky." This letter was written by Dr. Adams, 

 February 27, 1818, to John H. Famham of Frankfort , but was not published 

 till 1820, or one year after McMurtrie's work above cited. In transmitting 

 it, Farnham said: "To the chymist and natural philosopher, the Indiana 

 cave presents a most interesting theatre of experience and speculation; 



