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MAMMOTH CAVE 
AND ITS 
INHABITANTS. 
CHAPTER I. 
THE FORMATION OF THE CAVE.* 
BY F. W. PUTNAM. 
After the adjournment of the meeting of the American Associ- 
ation for the Advancement of Science, held at Indianapolis, in 
August last, a large number of the members availed themselves of 
the generous invitation of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad 
Compaii}^, to visit this world renowned cave, and examine its pe- 
culiar formation and singular fauna. 
The cave is in a hill of the subcarboniferous limestone forma- 
tion in Edmondson County, a little to the west and south of the 
centre of Kentucky. Green river, which rises to the eastward in 
about the centre of the state, flows westward passing in close 
proximity to the cave, and receiving its waters thence flows north- 
westerly to the Ohio. 
The limestone formation in which the cave exists, is a most in- 
teresting and important geological formation, corresponding to 
the mountain limestone of the European geologists, and of con- 
siderable geological importance in the determination of the west- ' 
ern coal fields. 
We quote the following account of this formation from Major S. 
S. L37-on’s report in the fourth volume of the Kentucky Geological 
Survey, pages 509-10. ^ 
“The sinks and basins at the head of Sinking creek exhibit 
in a striking manner, the eroding effect of rains and frost — some 
of the sinks, which are from forty to one hundred and ninety feet 
From the American Naturalist for December, 1871. 
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