228 
But the thirteen or fourteen years that Mr. Pengelly has had the 
cave under his careful inspection does not enable him to say 
at what rate the stalagmite formed 2000 years ago. His data 
for computation cannot possibly extend back farther than the 
year 1604, for that is the earliest date yet found in the cave.”* 
And there is no evidence whatever to show that since 1604 
the deposit has been uniform. The date only shows that inch 
of stalagmite has deposited since that time ; it does not show 
that its equivalent, i.e. 5 ^ 0 part of an inch, has formed 
annually. There is in reality no evidence to show that stalag- 
mite has formed at all since Mr. Pengelly first visited the cave 
in 1834. The inch may have formed in a comparatively 
short time, and then the work may have ceased. The drip from a 
limestone roof is not always depositing stalagmite ; the quantity 
of carbonate of lime in the drip may be variable, or the deposit 
may entirely cease. In my judgment, the approach of stalactite 
and stalagmite in Cheddar Cavern is a case of this kind. A 
single drop of water suspended from the point of one touches 
the point of the other, and this has been watched for the last 
forty years, but they have not united, nor can the least increase 
of either stalactite or stalagmite be detected. 
If, then, there is no evidence of uniform accretion for the 
past 250 years, it is something tremendous to base any con- 
clusion upon a supposed uniformity for a period of 7,750 years, 
especially after Mr. Pengelly’s own caution, “ that it is unsafe to 
use the rate at which stalagmite accumulates in one branch of a 
cavern to measure the time represented by the stalagmite in any 
other branch of the same cavern.” 
I therefore object to applying the scale of ^ of an inch in 
250 years '(if even the uniformity of the accretion could be 
proven) to the 1^ inch of stalagmite covering the extinct mam- 
malia, because it would be applying the scale belonging to the 
“ Cave of Inscriptions ” to the stalagmite of the vestibule, 
which Mr. Pengelly says that it is unsafe to do. 
It would be unsatisfactory to all parties, but especially to the 
Palaeontologist and to the Anthropologist, for, in the first place, 
it would put man in the wrong position with regard to the 
extinct mammalia ; for if this scale be applied to the vestibule 
stalagmite it would go to prove that the antiquity of the men 
who made the bone awl and the harpoon is above eleven times 
greater than the extinct cave-bear, cave-hyeena, mammoth, 
and Rhinoceros tichorinus , for their works of skill were from 
12 to 20 inches (average 16) beneath these mammalian 
* Notes of Geology and Paleontology of Devonshire, part i. (July, 1874), 
p. 23. 
