DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
11 
of the cave, and form above the mud a plate or crust, shooting across 
like ice on the surface of water, or cream on a pan of milk. (See 
Plate II. fig. 2 .) The thickness and quantity of this crust varied 
with that found on the roof and sides, being most abundant, and 
covering the mud entirely where there was much stalactite on the 
roof and sides, and more scanty in those places where the roof or sides 
presented but little : in many parts it was totally wanting both on the 
roof and surface of the mud and of the subjacent floor. Great portion 
of this crust had been destroyed in digging up the mud to extract 
the bones before my arrival; it still remained, however, projecting 
partially in some few places along the sides ; and in one or two, where 
it was very thick, it formed, when I visited the cave, a continuous 
bridge over the mud entirely across from one side to the other. In 
the outer portion of the cave, there was originally a mass of this 
kind which had been accumulated so high as to obstruct the passage, 
so that a man could not enter till it had been dug away. 
These horizontal incrustations have been formed by the water 
which, trickling down the sides, was forced to ooze off laterally as 
soon as it came into contact with the mud; in other parts, where it 
fell in drops from the roof, stalagmitic accumulations have been raised 
on its surface, some of which are very large and flat, resembling a 
cake of bees’ wax, but more commonly they are of the size and shape 
of a cow’s pap, a name which the workmen have applied to them. 
There is no alternation of mud with any repeated beds of stalactite, 
but simply a partial deposit of the latter on the floor beneath it; and 
it was chiefly in the lower part of the earthy sediment, and in the 
stalagmitic matter beneath it, that the animal remains were found: 
c 2 
