CAVES AND FISSURES AT CHUDLEIGH. 
69 
caverns, the floor of all which was covered with a deep bed of mud, 
over the surface of which was spread a crust of stalagmite; but as 
these caverns have not been examined, no bones have as yet been 
found in them. The occurrence, however, of fissures and caves more 
or less filled with mud, sand, fragments of stone and stalactite, is 
universal in the limestone rocks of this district, whilst the dispersion 
of bones through them is partial. The caves of Kent’s Hole and 
others near Babicombe and Torbay are notorious examples of this 
kind # . 
These fissures and caverns are so connected, so often confluent 
and inosculating with each other, and so identical as to their con¬ 
tents, that there appears to be no difference as to the time or manner 
in which they were filled; indeed, something intermediate between 
a cavern and a fissure, which we may call a cavernous fissure, is the 
more common form under which they occur. In many of those which 
are nearly vertical the communication with the surface is obvious; 
* At the extensive quarries in the rock of Chudleigh, composed of the same tran¬ 
sition limestone as that of Plymouth, we found exactly the same phenomena of caves and 
fissures, partially or wholly filled with a similar diluvium, to that at Oreston. In one of 
the fissures so filled, which was several feet in breadth, and intersected the limestone 
exactly like a great wall or dyke, Mr. Warburton discovered a few small fragments of 
bone, and in all of them there were numerous pebbles of chert and chalk flint, and tran¬ 
sition slate, mixed with the mud that formed the principal substance which filled these 
fissures up to the very surface of the soil. In another large fissure fragments of lime¬ 
stone predominated, and the quantity of mud was small; and here the entire mass was 
united by stalagmite into a breccia so solid that it remains erect, projecting like a thick 
wall after the removal of the limestone from each side of it, and at first sight looks more 
like a mass of rude masonry running across the quarry than a natural production; a 
similar wall, composed of fragments of oolite cemented by stalagmite, crosses the middle 
of a large quarry of oolite on Banner Down, near Bath. The solid rock that once in¬ 
closed it has here also been removed from both its sides, whilst at each extremity it is 
seen to be prolonged into the body of the natural rock, and entirely to fill up a fissure 
therein of considerable breadth. 
