April ^, 1872] 



NATURE 



445 



boulders and pieces of rock, scratched and scored with the 

 unmistakeable lines that glaciers alone produce. These 

 phenomena he observed to be repeated, or rather continued, 

 throughout the highland, which he crossed three times at 

 intervals, including above 100 miles of its length. 



About the midmost of the plateau stands a solitary, 

 dome-like eminence, nearly 8,000 feet above the sea level, 

 and rounded off in every direction. On the west side of 

 this mountain, now known as "Yelish Dagh," near its 

 base, Mr. Palgrave found a second moraine, consisting 

 of a single stone bank five or six hundred yards in length, 

 stretching down to a valley below : its higher extremity 

 was at about 6,500 ft. And lastly, at the great cleft about 

 fifty miles distant, called the Cherdakh Pass, and leading 

 downwards from the plateau into the Euphrates valley, 

 he observed a third moraine, larger than either of the two 

 former, and extending over a slope of fully 2,000 ft., its 

 base being only about 4,500 ft. above the sea. 



From these and similar indications, Mr. Palgrave con- 

 jectured that during the glacial period an ice-cap of fifty 

 miles in average breadth, and many hundred in length, 

 must have covered this table-land from a height of 

 6,000 ft., or rather less, upwards ; while some of the more 

 advanced glaciers may have reached to a far lower level, 

 seemingly 4,000 ft. 



Such were the most remarkable surface-phenomena of 

 the plateau itself But on its margin, whether north or 

 south, and connected with it, were other indications of an 

 analogous character. These consisted in the traces 

 afforded by broad and deep ravines and neighbouring 

 river beds, much too wide for the streams that flow 

 through them ; all affording evidence of a past epoch 

 when the water supply was on a far more copious scale 

 than it is now. Thus the valley of the Euphrates itself, 

 which takes its rise in this very plateau, is, in its evenly- 

 scooped extent of three and even four miles across, out of 

 all proportion with the comparatively little and feeble 

 stream that now meanders along it ; and the same must 

 be said of most of the aqueous modifications imprinted in 

 the lower mountain ranges, and in the plains at their feet, 



But of all the phenomena of this kind none is more 

 remarkable than that inspected by Mr. Palgrave near the 

 sea-end of the great valley by which the river, once 

 Pyxartes, now " Deyermend-Dereh," or " Mill Stream " 

 enters the Euxine, close by Trebizond. This river, 

 whose waters are derived from the central table land, is 

 now so shallow as to be readily fordable at almost every 

 season of the year, and brings down with it just enough 

 pebble and soil to form a httle bar at its mouth. Half a 

 mile, however, from the present beach the river valley, 

 here about a third of a mile in width, is in its greater part 

 crossed by a huge bar of rolled stones, at least forty feet 

 in eight, and eighty or a hundred yards in thickness at its 

 base, evidently formed here by the joint action of river 

 and sea. The stones, many of which are of great size, 

 belong to Jurassic or Plutonic formations, such as com- 

 pose the plateau inland, whereas the coast-rock is entirely 

 volcanic. But the flood of water requisite to bring them 

 from such a distance is now wholly wanting. Nor can its 

 diminution be ascribed to the extirpation of forest wood, 

 for the mountain chain is still as densely clothed with 

 trees as it could ever have been in remote times ; nor yet 

 to an alteration in the course and dip of the valleys that 

 unite to send their supplies hither, for there is no trace of 

 any great geological change hereabouts within the epoch 

 to which the bar itself is referable. One only cause there 

 could have been capable of furnishing so impetuous a 

 stream, namely, the periodical melting of great masses of 

 ice and snow on the mountains behind, now unusually 

 bare of snow from June till November, and absolutely 

 denuded of anything approaching to a glacier. When 

 these icy reservoirs ceased the abundance of the river 

 ceased also, leaving the bar alone as a monument of its 

 former strength. T. P. 



THE INHABITANTS OF THE MAMMOTH 

 CAVE OF KENTUCKY 



Crustaceans and Insects 



'X'HE following account of the inhabitants of the Mam- 

 ^ moth Cave of Kentucky is abridged from the 

 American Naturalist. To the courtesy of the editors of 

 that journal we are further indebted for the accompanying 

 illustrations : — 



After the adjournment of the meeting of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, held at 

 Indianapolis in August last, a large number of the mem- 

 bers availed themselves of thj generous invitation of the 

 Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, to visit this 

 world-renowned cave, and examine its peculiar formation 

 and singular fauna. 



The cave is in a hill of the subcarboniferous limestone 

 formation in Edmondson County, a little to the west and 

 south of the centre of Kentucky. Green river, which rises 

 to the eastward in about the centre of the State, flows 

 westward, passing in close proximity to the cave, and 

 receiving its waters, thence flows north-westerly to the 

 Ohio. The limestone formation in which the cave exists is a 

 most interesting and important geological formation, cor- 

 responding to the mountain limestone of the European 

 geologists, and of considerable geological importance in 

 the determination of the western coalfields. 



We quote the following account of this formation from 

 Major S. S. Lyon's report in the fourth volume of the 

 " Kentucky Geological Survey," pp. 509, 510 : — 



" The sinks and basins at the head of Sinking Creek 

 exhibit in a striking manner the eroding ettects of rains 

 and frost — some of the sinks, which are from 40 ft. to 

 190 ft. deep, covering an area of from 5 to 2,000 acres. 

 The rim of sandstone surrounding these depressions is, 

 generally, nearly level ; the out-cropping rocks within are 

 also nearly horizontal. Near the centre there is an open- 

 ing of from 3 ft. to 1 5 ft. in diameter ; into this opening 

 the water which has fallen within the margin of the basin 

 has been drained since the day when the rocks exposed 

 within were raised above the drainage of the country, and 

 thus, by the slow process of washing and weathering, the 

 rocks which once filled these cavities have been worn and 

 carried down into the subterranean drainage of the coun- 

 try. All this has evidently come to pass in the most 

 quiet and regular manner. The size of the central open- 

 ing is too small to admit extraordinary floods ; nor is it 

 possible, with the level margin around, to suppose that 

 these cavities were worn by eddies in a current that swept 

 the whole cavernous member of the subcarboniferous 

 limestone of western Kentucky ; but the opinion is pro- 

 bable that the upheaving force which raised these beds to 

 their present level at the same time ruptured and cracked 

 the beds in certain lines : that afterwards the rains were 

 swallowed into openings on these fractures, producing, by 

 denudation, the basins of the sinkhole country, and further 

 enlarging the original fractures by flowing through them, 

 and thus fonning a vast system of caverns, which sur- 

 rounds the western coalfield. The Mammoth Cave is at 

 present the best known, and therefore the most remark- 

 able." 



So much has been written on the cave and its wonders, 

 that to give a description of its interior would be super- 

 fluous in this connection, even could we do so without 

 unintentionally giving too exaggerated statements, which 

 seems to be the natural result of a day underground, at 

 least so far as this cave is concerned, for, after reading 

 any account of the cave, one is disappointed at fit- ding the 

 reality so unlike the picture. 



We are indebted to Prof. Alexander Winchell, of the 

 University of Michigan, for the following abstract of his 

 views concerning the formation of the cave : — 



" The country of the Mammoth Cave was probably dry 

 land at the close of the coal period, and has remained 



