4 



Proceedings o f the Royal Irish Academy. 



Violent floods must have drained through the Mammoth Cave, for 

 in several places the sand-bed had been washed away from beneath 

 the stalagmite, often leading to the break-down of the latter ; and 

 where this had not taken place, bones, such as a Eear's jaw, were 

 found adhering to the lower side of the stalagmite. 



In other places, as in the Elephant Hall, the stalagmite was 

 unbroken ; and on its removal the fragments of a more ancient floor 

 were found beneath it in the sand, together with animal remains. A 

 large mass of stalagmite of this sort lay over a skull of Deer, which 

 again rested on the skull of a Bear. 



The stones found in the sand-deposit of this cave are limestone 

 fragments, and there is a general absence of those water-worn or ice- 

 worn pebbles and boulders with which I was so familiar in the caves 

 of Sligo and Clare. Above the stalagmite, it is true, there are earth- 

 falls intruded here and there from above, through fissures. In these 

 are many worn stones of the paving-stone type ; but I have failed to 

 observe them below the stalagmite. The animal remains, round 

 which centres the interest of this cave, are in extraordinary profusion, 

 and often admirably preserved ; they are found in all directions, even 

 in the most remote and narrow galleries. 



I am not referring now to the fox-earth bones which are generally 

 found on the surface of the stalagmite, and which may be considered 

 quite recent, but to the great harvest of fossil bones which we have 

 found beneath the stalagmite floor, often embedded in it, or in the 

 brecciated sand that adhered to its lower side. These had been 

 occasionally washed out of their position into lower galleries, where 

 they lay loose on the sand. Sometimes a large bone was partially 

 cemented into the stalagmite, or sand breccia, and partially exposed ; 

 and elsewhere there were bones and fragments of tusks among lime- 

 stone rubble, or on shelves of the walls where they had been left 

 high and dry. 



The two animals most numerously represented are Bear and 

 Reindeer ; and here I may remark that the widespread prevalence of 

 these creatures has been proved most convincingly by the caves of 

 Ireland, none of which, if they contain extinct animals at all, seem to 

 be without remains of Bear or Beindeer, or of both. The Bears appear 

 to have inhabited the galleries and chambers of the Mammoth Cave, 

 where they brought in their prey, which included such large game as 

 Elephants and Irish Elks, whose bones were gnawed and fractured ; 

 even the long bones of the adult Mammoth had lost their extremities, 

 and its tusks had been broken into small fragments ; while the remains 



