324 WNoticeand Review of the Reliquiae Diluvianac. 
rock-houses in Kentucky. Certainly the caverns have 
been the habitation of wild beasts, and great quantities of 
leaves, &c. have been mixed with the debris of the super- 
incumbent rocks, but it does not seem probable, that much 
animal matter could be filtrated through a roof of rock, 
verbaps forty or fifty feet in thickness.” 
Dr. Brown quotes a passage from Barrow’s navel 
part of which we here repeat. 
‘“There was also in the same cave, (with the nitre,) 
ranning down the sides of the rock, a black substance that 
was apparently bituminous. The peasants call it the urine 
of the das. The dung of this gregarious animal was lying 
upon the roof of the cavern to the amount of many waggon 
loads. The putrid animal matter, filtrating through the 
rock, contributed no doubt to the formation of the nitre. 
The hepatic well and the native nitre rocks were in the 
division of Agster Sneuwberg, (South Africa,) which joins 
the Tacka tothe south-west.” Barrow’s Travels, p. 291. 
To the same point, in regard to the American caves, we 
quote the following paragraph from Rev. E. Cornelius? ac- 
count of the cave at Nicojack, in the Cherokee country, 
as given Vol. 1. p. 321 of this Journal. 
‘** The sides of the principal excavation present a few 
apartments which are interesting, principally because they 
furnish large quantities of the earth from which the nitrate 
of potash is obtained. This is a circumstance very com- 
mon to the caves of the western country. In that at 
Nicojack, it abounds, and is found covering the surfaces of 
fallen rocks, but in more abundance beneath them. There 
are two kinds, one is called the ‘‘ clay dirt,” the other the 
- “black dirt ;” the last is much more strongly impregnated 
than the first.” 
In the cave at Kuhlock, Mr. Buckland found the pure 
black animal dust beneath a diluvia] sediment of calcare- 
ous loam, which had been disturbed by digging, and which 
was mixed with the black earth. Now what is the ‘‘ clay 
dirt”? Mr. Cornelius mentions, but this diluvial sediment 
had been dug into these animal remains, where they filled the cavity, and 
as some of the bones and mud remained adhering to the roof and sides, ob- 
servers concluded the original roof and sides to be constituted of them : 
But Mr. Buckland declares this not to be true ina single instance ; and 
probably Barrow’s account is to be corrected in the same manner. 
