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cavern was derived from without , and impelled inwards in a 
fluid state, and that it was composed of the adventitious trans- 
portable materials which it collected in its march, viz., sand, 
clay, and gravel. That there is evidence of only one such 
irruption, and that there is no evidence of its having been 
preceded or followed by another. 
“From an inspection of the compound character of the 
deposit reposing on the substratum of rubble, and enveloping 
the bones, it is certain that it is merely the sediment of a fluid 
that held in suspension clay and gravel, which it swept up in 
passing over the surface of the adjacent country, and threw its 
waves into the cavern in a tumultuous manner, is manifest from 
the ruins of the ancient roof and floor buried in the sediment 
in the shape of loose cones and slabs of spar, and in the accu- 
mulation against the opposite walls of heaps of gravel and 
bones. ” 
“ The land flood descended from the mountains to the level 
of the ocean ; and if its direction may be inferred from its 
gravel, it came from Dartmoor. It can be conceived how the 
cavern and open fissures may have been filled with a muddy 
sediment derived from the surrounding surface, by supposing 
its vehicle to descend from above in the form of rain, and to 
have washed into the open cavities the movable substances 
which it met on its march. All this might have happened 
before the land flood had joined its waters to the ocean. The 
absence of marine exuviae supports this view.” 
PART II. 
Those who desire really to understand the true character of 
Kent’s Cavern should take the trouble to read through some 
hundred pages of McEnery’s MS., left by him in an imperfect 
state, but published by Mr. Pengelly, under the title of the 
“Literature of Kent’s Cavern.” The great beaut} 7 - of the 
stalactite in some of the distant recesses of the vast series of 
caverns which ho was the first to enter, the peril and difficulty 
of the exploration, the weird character of the unknown world 
revealed to view, and its first impression on the imagination, 
remind us of some of the descriptions of Dante. The almost 
incredible abundance of the relics of animal life leads to inquiries 
as to the surroundings of the cavern ; sinco in the present con- 
figuration of the land, it does not appear possiblo that so large 
an amount of animal life could have found subsistence in the 
