50. REPORT—1868. 
side into an apartment, which, on account of its position in relation to the 
other branches of the Eastern Series, has been termed the “ South-west 
Chamber.” It is at present comparatively smal], but, as has been already 
remarked, it may prove when completely emptied to be much larger. At 
the junction of the two apartments, the space between the opposite walls of 
the Cavern is inconsiderable ; and this, before the workmen commenced their 
excavations, was much diminished by an enormous mass of limestone which 
had fallen from above, and was estimated at upwards of 100 tons. Its base 
was buried from two to three feet deep in the Cave-earth, and its summit 
reached a height of fully six feet above the Modern Floor of Stalagmite. On 
account of its form it was commonly known as the “ Pulpit Rock,” but it 
not unfrequently received the appellation of the “ Lecturer’s Rostrum,” 
mainly because, when lectures were delivered within the Cavern on its his- 
tory and formation, the speaker always took his stand on this rock, his au- 
dience being assembled in the adjacent Lecture Hall. The removal of the 
Pulpit absorbed a considerable amount of time, but it was quite indis- 
pensable in order to the excavation of the South-west Chamber, the entrance 
of which it guarded. 
In the South-west Chamber there was no trace of the overlying Black 
Mould, This accumulation had presented itself in every other branch of the 
Eastern Series of chambers and galleries, with the single exception of the 
inner portion of the Gallery in the western wall of the Great Chamber, where 
it gradually thinned out. It covered the entire Floor of the Lecture Hall to 
a depth as great as in any other part of the Cavern, but it terminated 
abruptly at the Pulpit Rock, and was not resumed southwards. 
In 1846, a Subcommittee of the Torquay Natural-History Society, con- 
sisting of Dr. Battersby and the Superintendents of the present work, com- 
menced a search in this Chamber, when they broke up the Modern Floor of 
Stalagmite over a rudely circular area about 6 feet in diameter. They ex- 
cavated the underlying Cave-earth to the depth of about 2 feet, when, having 
found nothing, they abandoned the search, leaving the pit empty and the 
materials dug out of it lying in a heap near. Probably no part of the Cavern 
is in wet weather more exposed to drip than this ; hence it might have been 
expected that here, if anywhere, twenty-two years would have produced a 
film of stalagmite of appreciable thickness, especially as it was known that 
the Modern Floor attains an average thickness considerably surpassing that 
in any other part of the Cavern which the Committee have explored. Yet 
not a film was to be found either at the bottom of the pit, on the section 
made in digging it, or on the Cave-earth thrown out of it. This remote 
part of the Cavern was very rarely entered by visitors, and the operations of 
nature went on without check or interference; but everything was found 
precisely as it was left upwards of twenty years ago. 
The form of the South-west Chamber, as well as the huge accumulation 
of stalagmite on its western side, rendered it expedient to excavate the de- 
posits it contained in two distinct “ Divisions” or series of workings—an 
eastern and a western, the working direction in the former being southward, 
and in the latter westward. The first has been completed, and considerable 
progress has been made in the second. 
With the exception of the ground broken by the Torquay Natural-History 
Society, the Modern Floor of Stalagmite was everywhere perfectly continuous 
throughout this Chamber. In the Eastern Division it averaged 28 inches 
in thickness ; in one instance only it was no more than 6 inches ; it was very 
seldom so little as a foot, and it several times attained to 5 and even 
