6 
On the Caves Perforating Marble 
The entrance to this cave is fully twenty feet above the 
level of the Limestone Creek, and is exceedingly narrow. 
The difficulty encountered on entering is, however, amply 
recompensed for by the pleasure experienced when the 
interior beauties are brought into view — pendent crystalline 
stalactites of innumerable forms of beauty stud the ceiling, 
while the floors and sides, in addition to numei’ous stalag- 
mital pillars, are here and there fretted with a rich deposit 
of glittering calcitic ciystals. The rough sketch is a faint 
endeavour to portray the characteristic cave scenery. 
In many places the floor is made up of thick deposits of 
silt, covered by a thin stalagmital coating ; while in others 
the original silt has been removed, leaving a thin floor of 
stalagmite. 
In many places where fissures exist to the surface from 
the uppermost cavern, the sides of the latter are covered 
with a mass of soft, milky-white substance, fully three 
inches thick, which I cannot describe better than by calling 
it calcareous froth. The substance hardens upon exjDosure 
to the external air, and is most abundant after a heavy rain- 
fall, when the interior of the cave is in a moist condition. 
The marble, where examined on the sides and roof of the 
cave, although the bedding was more obscure and apparently 
of greater thickness than seen on the weathered surface, 
yet still retained the objectionable yellow seams discernible 
at the surface. The only fossils obtained in the vicinity 
of this cave were impressions of encrinites, too obscure for 
palaeontological identification. A section through the caves, 
and the deposit in which they are situated, gives the features 
shown in Diagram No. 4, and in following the deposit along 
the line of strike the beds are seen to be flexured to a 
considerable extent, and narrow at their extremities to thin 
bands of corrugated calcareous shale, as in Diagram 4. 
Cave No. 2. — Sheeak’s Cave. 
This is, perhaps, the largest cave in the series, and is 
situate at the base of an extensive bluff of marble on the 
western side of Limestone Creek, about half-a-mile below 
Pendergast’s Cave (see sketch). The general direction of 
the cave conforms to the existing drainage system of the 
Limestone Creek, and is nearly parallel with the .strike of the 
beds themselves. Where the ramifications are rectangular 
to the general direction, they arc, I think, produced by the 
