MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. 283 
from the roof. Calc-sinter might be a right term for a German to 
use, but in English it meant a deposit from calcareous springs, 
and not from rain water leaking into caves. 
Professor von Haast said that there was no incrustation, only 
a chemically weathered surface of rock, and that even this was 
absent in some of his specimens on the table. If there had been 
an incrustation it would be still forming, and would have covered 
the paintings. He quoted several authors to show that the proper 
word to use for incrustations on the sides of caves was stalactite, 
and not stalagmite, and that no English geologist used the word 
stalagmite as Professor Hutton had done. 
Mr. Maskell asked whether the absence of an incrustation over 
the paintings could not be accounted for by the supposition that 
the paintings were modern. 
Professor Cook thought that Mr. Maskell’s question required 
an answer. If Professor Haast had shown that the word stalac- 
tite might be used, he had not shown that stalagmite was incor-: 
Reet. 
Mr. Inglis thought that Professor Hutton’s explanation of the 
origin of the surface of the rock was the only one that had been 
given them. Dr. Haast had not attempted an explanation. He 
had seen the cave, and was confident that the rock forming its 
walls and roof must absorb the rain. 
Professor Haslam agreed with Mr. Inglis that the wall of the 
cave must sometimes be wet. The water running off the edge, 
which Dr. Haast admitted he had seen, would find its way down 
the surface although it was curved. There did not appear to be 
much difference between the words stalactite and stalagmite, and 
the latter certainly might be used without error, and without mis- 
leading other people. 
Professor Hutton was sorry that Dr. Haast could not see the 
incrustation on the rock; all those specimens which showed any 
trace of painting had it. It was wanting certainly in some of Dr. 
Haast’s specimens, but these were stones from the bottom of the 
cave, with a weathered surface all round. . If Dr. Haast’s idea of 
a chemically weathered surface was correct, how was it that these 
_ stones did not show it? Asa matter of fact the rock of the cave 
had not a chemically but a mechanically weathered surtace. Pro- 
fessor von. Haast had not/produced a single authority to prove the 
correct name to be applied to the incrustations on the sides of 
caves; they all mentioned only the roof or floor, about which there 
was no dispute. In his quotation from Nicol’s ‘ Mineralogy” 
about Flo-ferri and Satin-spar, the words “on the sides and floors 
of caverns” read by Dr. Haast after -‘ stalactite’’ were not in the 
book* Sir C. Lyell certainly used the word stalactitic for the cal- 
careous matter filling fissures, but Sir C. Lyell was notoriously lax 
in his use of geological terms in those books that were intended 
for all readers, and he was no authority on the names of rocks and 
minerals. 
Professor von. Haast said that the surtace was Sead chemi- 
cally weathered, and that it got harder by weathering; but this 
weathered surface did not always exist. The rock never got wet. 
He would send a specimen to a celebrated German, who would 
* Nicol’s ‘‘ Elements of Mineralogy,” 2nd Ed,, 1873, p. 196. 
