- ■' ' I^EW BRUNSWlCk CAVES/ ’ ' 163 
ago, took* a line • and light and ' went in about 300 yards, and 
brought out a large lump of ice in July.” He does not state the 
nature of the rock in which the excavation occurs. 
In connection with the subject of caves in the Lower Carboni- 
ferous rocks, the mode of occurrence of the manganese deposits 
in Kings county, especially about Markhamville, is interesting 
and suggestive. Desiring some reliable data upon the subject, 
I applied to Col. Alfred Markham, former manager of the 
Markhamville manganese mines, and from him have learned the 
following particulars : 
( 1 ) “I have found caverns at Markhamville and at Dutch 
Valley, in King’s county. Those explored by me were very 
irregular in size and shape. They had all more or less water 
running through them, some of them opening to the surface on 
the sides of ravines having small entrances and opening out into 
irregular chambers ten to fifty feet wide and six to twenty feet 
high, narrowing again into small passages, while some of them 
showed manganese in small irregular patches imbedded in the 
rock at sides, top and bottom.” 
(2) “ Other caves were closed by earth from the outside, 
and were opened by my workmen in driving drifts into them in 
search of manganese.” 
(3 'M do not think that the deposits of manganese came by 
filling caves previously formed, because in most cases the rock 
surrounding pockets of manganese is impregnated with ore so 
intimately mixed that they must have been deposited at the same 
time. Yet, on the other hand, I have taken small nodules of 
high-class ore (pyrolusite) like taking a nut out of its shell.” 
(4) “ 1 have not found any evidence to warrant the state- 
ment that manganese was deposited from an aqueous solution. 
I should add that the manganese oxide is not found exclusively 
in rock formation. I have taken hundreds of tons out of the 
alluvium, sometimes under more than ten feet of earth.” 
Regarding temperature in the caves. Col. Markham adds : 
In some of the caves which I have examined, I have found ice 
