144 ANGULAR FRAGMENTS. STALAGMITE. STATE AND 
caves may have fallen from the roof either before or since the intro¬ 
duction of the diluvium, according as they are placed below or above 
the stalagmitic crust that covers its surface; some of them below it 
may also have been drifted in together with the pebbles. 
7. With respect to the stalagmite, though it often occurs trans¬ 
fused bodily through the substance of the diluvial sediment, it is never 
found in continuous strata alternating with other strata of mud, or 
pebbles, but always forming a single crust on the upper surface of the 
sediment. I could not find in any of the German caves a lower crust 
of stalagmite formed as at Kirkdale, beneath the mud, on the surface 
of the subjacent limestone rock ; but from the thickness of the dilu¬ 
vium, though it was in many places excavated 6 feet deep, there were 
so very few points in which it was possible to see the bottom, that at 
present we are without any evidence as to its existence or otherwise. 
8. The diluvium itself is either simply a mass of pebbles, or of 
loam or sand, or (which is more common) an irregular admixture of 
all these three substances, having bones indiscriminately distributed 
throughout them all; and in proportion as the mass has been more 
or less percolated by stalagmitic infiltrations, the bones are either 
simply embedded in loose earth, or in semi-indurated loam and 
pebbles, or cemented together with loam and pebbles into a firm 
osseous breccia, resembling that found in the fissures of limestone at 
Gibraltar, and along the shores and islands of the Mediterranean. 
Should it be suggested, that this loam or earthy matter may have 
originated from dust that has fallen from the decomposition of the 
roof of the caverns, the improbability of this origin appears from its 
non-agreement in chemical composition with the limestone of these 
