486 
REPORT ON THE EXPLORATION OF BRIXHAM CAVE. 
Crystal Gorge. Similar floors existed in the Pen and Keeping Galleries, and in the 
South Chamber, but not elsewhere. 
The detrital accumulations in the principal galleries were separable into distinct 
beds, and were respectively designated the “First,” “Second,” “Third,” and “Fourth” 
(see sections, Plate XLIII.). 
The First Fed was that mass of small angular fragments of limestone, cemented into 
a compact breccia by carbonate of lime, which filled the northern end of the Reindeer 
Gallery when the cavern was discovered. It was about 34 feet long, and from the com- 
mencement of the entire roof formed an inclined plane dipping southwards to a little 
beyond the mouth of the Steep Slide Hole, where it terminated. 
The Second Fed was a thin layer of blackish matter, which the workmen were accus- 
tomed to speak of as the charcoal bed. Dr. Percy, however, who saw it in situ , stated 
that it did not contain any thing entitling it to this appellation. It extended from 12 
feet south of the entrance to near the mouth of the Steep Slide Hole, and lay imme- 
diately beneath the first bed. Its greatest thickness did not exceed 1 foot, which it 
attained about 2 feet from its commencement, and it gradually thinned out southwards. 
No organic remains were found in it, nor did any thing resembling it occur elsewhere in 
the cavern. 
The Third Fed , sometimes called the Loam Fed and the Fone Fed , consisted of 
a reddish-brown, tenacious, clayey loam, and contained a large number of angular and 
subangular fragments of limestone, which varied in size from very small bits to masses 
weighing even a ton. The large blocks were found only in the West and South Cham- 
bers, and in the gallery connecting them, where the angular character of the roof, unlike 
that which obtained elsewhere, as well as the fact that the blocks were confined to the 
upper portion and surface of the deposit beneath, showed that they had fallen from above 
at a comparatively recent period. Pebbles of quartz, trap, and limestone were of frequent 
occurrence, especially in the Flint-knife Gallery and in the West Chamber. Nodules of 
iron-ore , well rounded, as if by travel, were occasionally met with in both the principal 
galleries. Dr. Percy pronounced them all to be specimens of the brown or hydrous 
hematite. Fragments of stalagmite, apparently portions of an old floor, were also 
found in this bed in the West Chamber, the western part of the Flint-knife Gallery, 
and in the Steep Slide Hole — portions of the cavern in which it does not appear that 
a floor of this kind ever existed. Some of them measured as much as 18 inches square, 
and from 3 to 4 inches thick. At least a cartload of this material must have been 
found. 
Ordinarily the third bed measured from 2 to 4 feet thick, the variations being due 
partly to inequalities in the surface of the deposit next below, and partly to the fact 
that the latter was invariably from 4 to 9 inches lower at the sides than in the middle 
of the galleries. 
Besides the inequalities just alluded to, there were two of a more marked character: 
