648 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



ward with a startling confirmation of the scriptural text, "And there were giants 

 in those days." For in Adams County have been found not only the bones of a 

 gigantic race of men, but their implements of warfare and husbandry, and excel- 

 lently preserved specimens of their art in sculpture, painting, engraving and 

 writing. 



Whether these prehistoric giants had a hand in the erection of those splendidly 

 designed and durably constructed pieces of engineering which stretch across the 

 country, from the headwaters of the Ohio to the mouth of Rio Grande, there to 

 commingle with a similar chain of roads, mounds and fortifications coming down the 

 Pacific Slope, and continue on through Mexico, Central America and the South 

 American States, to be finally lost in the unexplored barrens of Patagonia, will be 

 left for the solution of a wiser head than your correspondent possesses. He sim- 

 ply relates the facts; the scientists may build thereon the theories. 



In conversation with some of the oldest citizens of this county I have been 

 unable to learn the date of the discovery of a cave on the old Smith farm in Tif- 

 fin Township. Its existence was known to the earliest settlers, and they probably 

 learned it from the Indians. . For years it has been a place of resort for the cur- 

 ious, and was always esteemed a great natural curiosity. The old Smith farm is on 

 the Portsmouth pike, between fifteen and sixteen miles northeast of Manchester. 

 The farm is now owned by Mr. Samuel Grooms, and is a fertile, well-cultivated body 

 of land. About a mile from the pike is a level plateau of two hundred odd acres, 

 surrounded on all sides by lofty hills. As you near the mouth of the cave there is 

 a gradual depression of the ground on all sides, forming what, in the local nomen- 

 clature, is denominated a ' sink-hole." At the bottom of this circular basin is a 

 hole, three feet in diameter, and about twenty-five feet in depth, at which distance 

 from the surface you strike the floor of the first chamber in the cave, a dry cav- 

 ern thirty by twenty feet, with smooth floor, roof, and walls of freestone. Cross- 

 ing the room you enter a corridor five feet wide, connecting it with another 

 chamber, smaller than the first, and this in turn is connected with a third chamber 

 by a similar corridor. The third room is about the size of the first, but it has a 

 lofty, arched dome, and the walls, floor and roof are of limestone. Through this 

 rock water has oozed for countless ages, and formed thousands of glistening sta- 

 lactites and stalagmites. Nowhere else in the cave do you find the limestone 

 cropping out, and nowhere else do you find these slow-growing formations To 

 gain access to the fourth chamber it is necessary to climb a steep bank and squeeze 

 through a narrow fissure in the rock. In one corner of this chamber is an eleva- 

 tion, which, when surmounted, discloses a yawning well, with a mouth ten feet 

 in diameter, and of unknown depth. Apply your ear to the edge of the well and 

 you can hear the hollow roaring of a stream of water hundreds of feet below. Be- 

 yond this chamber are five others connected by narrow galleries. The cave 

 comes to an end against a perpendicular wall of solid rock, in the ninth chamber, 

 and about five hundred yards from the mouth. The floors of all the chambers 'ex- 

 cept the one where limestone crops out, are dry. All are mathematically regular 



