ON Kent's cavern^ Devonshire. 5 



It is separated from tlie Long Arcade by a massive curtain of limestone, 

 descending from the roof to the depth of 9 feet, across a space about 18 feet 

 wide, being, so to speak, slightly looped up at each end to form two small 

 entrances. Observers unaccustomed to caverns are not unlikely to speculate 

 on the cause which prevents the fall of this mass, and to hasten on lest the 

 time before the event occurs may be undesirably brief. 



Mr. MacEnery had conducted some diggings in the Labyrinth, and had 

 carried them to a depth of at least three feet at one of the entrances, so that 

 by assuming a stooping posture ingress and egress became possible. In all 

 other parts of the chamber his work was much less deep, and, on account of 

 the state of the floor, was necessarily discontinuous. 



Omitting the large blocks of limestone, the deposits were : — Eii'st, or upper- 

 most, a Floor of Granular Stalagmite, from which there arose several huge 

 bosses also of Stalagmite, one of which was 11 feet high above the floor, whilst 

 its base occupied a rudely circular space fully 15 feet in mean diameter. 



Second, a layer of Cave-earth, rarely amounting to more than a foot in 

 depth, and sometimes to not more than a few inches, whilst it occasionally 

 reached as much as 2 feet. 



Third. Though it may be doubted whether there ever was a Floor of the 

 more ancient, the Crystalline, Stalagmite in the Labyrinth, the lower, and by 

 far the greater, part of the bosses mentioned above was of that variety, and 

 was covered with a comparatively thin envelope of the Granular kind, without 

 any mechanical deposit between them. 



Eourth, the Breccia, or, so far as is known, the most ancient of the Cavern 

 deposits, lay immediately beneath the Cave-earth, from Avhich there was 

 nothing to separate it, and extended to a depth exceeding that to which the 

 excavations were carried. 



In looking at the facts as they presented themselves, day after day, the 

 following appears to be not improbably the history of the deposits in this 

 branch of the Cavern. 



During, as well as after, the deposition of the Breccia, with its ursine relics, 

 stalagmite, having now a crystalline texture, was in course of precipitation, 

 and in such a way as to form, not sheets ov floors, but bosses oi a more or less 

 conical form, which, whilst they rested on Breccia, had their lower slopes 

 covered with the same material, so that their bases were deeply buried in 

 that ancient deposit. After the close of the era of the Breccia, the precipi- 

 tation was still carried on, but, as before, in such a way as to add to the 

 volume of the bosses, and not to produce a floor. Then came the deposition 

 of the Cave-earth, containing remains of Bear, Lion, Fox, Hyajna, Mammoth, 

 Ehinoceros, Horse, Ox, and Bird — all of them, with the exception of the first 

 three, unknown to the Breccia. Later still was the precipitation of that 

 stalagmite which is granular instead of crystalline, and which not only added 

 to the dimensions of the already massive bosses, but flowed out in sheets and 

 covered the Cave-earth. Whilst all these successive operations were in pro- 

 gress, blocks of limestone from time to time fell from the roof — some of them 

 being buried in the Breccia at depths the excavators have not reached, some 

 lying loose on the Floor of Granular Stalagmite, and others occupying all 

 intermediate zones and representing all the intervening periods. 



In order to achieve the thorough exploration of the Labyrinth, it was 

 necessary to break up all the bosses of stalagmite with the exception of the 

 largest of them, of which a portion has been left intact, it being believed that 

 it shows strikingly the utter inadequacy of the data derived from a boss to 

 solve the problem of the amount of time represented by a floor, and vice versd. 



o 



