622 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



two feet thick. This hole gives access to another similar room, the floor of which 

 is on a level twenty feet lower. That room too, is oblong. It is fifteen feet wide 

 twenty feet long and twenty-five feet high. Walls like those last described. In 

 both these rooms the layer of guano which covers the floor is at least ten feet 

 thick, as with a pole of that length, bottom could not be reached. The first of 

 the rooms is called the Jones Room, after Dr. T. Hodge Jones, secretary of the 

 cave company, who was the first to explore it. The second the Arnold Room, 

 after F. D. W. Arnold, treasurer of the same company; for a similar reason. 



II — 15. Where the foot of the cone approaches closest to the wall of the 

 cave is a recess in that wall. Five passages, all low and narrow, lead from that 

 recess. They are about three feet highland three to four feet wide, and slope 

 gently downwards. Each leads to a series of small rooms of irregular shape. 

 Only nine of these rooms have been visited. Passages and rooms both have 

 been but imperfectly explored. The rock in them, and even in the recess of the 

 cave, is of an alkaline nature and crumbling. Everywhere are loose stones and 

 debris. The rock easily slackens and pulverizes. An acid causes it when pul- 

 verized to effervesce. The application of water hardens it into the likeness of 

 plaster-of-Paris. The color is light gray. It has not been analyzed. No guano 

 here. The bats avoid this place ; probably because the rocks in the roof are apt 

 to tumble down. This same circumstance has retarded more thorough explora- 

 tion. # 



The temperature of the cave is 56° F. during the hottest season. It rises 

 slightly in rooms and passages below. Whenever the weather is cool, a person 

 sitting on the top of the cone at the foot of the ladder, can see myriads of bats 

 sweeping down the mouth of the cave. 



The "Wilderness Road," a wagon-road leading from Springfield, Mo., into 

 Arkansas, passes within four miles of the cave. These four miles can be 

 traveled over by a remarkably good natural road, with beautiful scenery all the 

 way. Springfield is forty miles from the point where this road strikes the Wil- 

 derness Road. 



Forsythe, the head of navigation on White River, during the high water of 

 spring, is fifteen miles in a straight line from the cave. It is the county seat of 

 Taney County. Galena, the county seat of Stone County, is also fifteen miles 

 off, and Ruth, distant six miles, in the same county, is the nearest postoffice. 



Capt. Emery, in a private letter, says that while the above description may 

 be in some points slightly overdrawn, it is in the main very correct, and that '* not 

 half of the wonders of the cave are told." — [Ed. Review. 



