223 
the floor having been previously disturbed, we broke through 
the solid Stalagmite in three different parts of the cavern, 
and in each instance found flint knives, closely resembling 
those in the most ancient barrows. The thickness of the 
Stalagmite is about two feet.” 
To this extract from the Report of a Committee of the 
Torquay Natural History Society, appointed to make an ex- 
ploration of the Cavern, is added the following informa- 
tion. 
“ Stalagmite, it may be explained, is a deposit of lime- 
stone formed by the dropping of water from the roof, the 
water having dissolved the lime in sinking through the rocks 
above.” 
But what if the two feet of Stalagmite is not in a literal 
sense Stalagmite at all, but a mass of calcareous deposit 
formed in some other way than by dropping in a fluid state 
from the rocks above ? 
What proof remains that “ the three feet of thickness to 
which the floor sometimes attains, or even the sixteen or 
twenty inches which it averages, must be of very good 
chronological value ? ” * 
Mr. Pengelly himself tells us (p. 602) that “ Science, whose 
very essence is accuracy, cannot be advanced by gratuitous 
beliefs ” ! 
In the next page of this work (which Mr. Pengelly ac- 
knowledgesf (p. 615) (though it does not bear any signature), 
I read “ that the time required for the formation of a sheet of 
stalagmite 2 feet thick, added to 
since, falls short of his antiquity,” 
Man. 
But now a truer light seems to have dawned on the 
observers ; for in their twelfth report (quoted from p. 617) the 
Committee of the British Association, describing the explora- 
tion of the portion of the cavern known as the Labyrinth, say, 
“ It was necessary to break up all the bosses of stalagmite, 
with the exception of the largest of them, of which a portion 
has been left intact, it being believed that it shows strikingly 
the utter inadequacy of the data derived from a boss to solve 
the problem of the amount of time represented by a floor, and 
vice versa. 33 
I have no doubt that this is a most formidable source of 
* See tile Ancient Cave Men of Devonshire, under the description of “ The 
Crypt of Dates ” (pp. wanting). 
t Rep. Britt. Ass. 1876, p. 5 (quoted by Mr. Pengelly p. 617). 
that which has elapsed 
i.e. of the Antiquity of 
