194. Explorations in the Bone Cave of Ballynamintra. 
rounded and subangular fragments of the Old Red Sandstone and other rocks, but 
not of limestone. These were mixed with an impure brown sand. Its upper portion 
was often solidified by calcareous infiltration, and when broken formed hard blocks. 
The high bench of gravel on the left side (shown in cross-section A), had seams 
or layers in it of the same material as the stalagmite floor. That the entire gravel- 
bed in the cave was probably once on a level with this bench, will be set forth in the 
sequel, where the causes of its denudation along the centre and the right side of the 
cave will be suggested. So far as was ascertained, this lowest. stratum extended 
through the inner cavity, where, as elsewhere, the stalagmite floor reposed on it. 
The Inner Cavity. 
Beyond twenty-four feet from its mouth the cave loses its tunnel shape, expanding 
into two irregular chambers divided by a depending ridge (as shown in cross-section 
F). In each of these divisions is a great upward opening, whose height has not been 
ascertained. Both these “chimneys” as well as the entire of the inner cavity (with 
the exception of part of the left-hand chamber), were completely filled up. 
The gravel and the stalagmite floor resting on it were the only strata that here 
retained their typical characters. The surface of the stalagmite, which betrayel 
signs of disintegration except on the right side, was at a considerably lower level 
in the inner cavity than it was a little further out, and to it adhered a light brown 
very tenacious clay, passing upwards into brown, sandy loam, densely packed. Both 
the clay and the loam above it contained local and transported fragments of limestone 
and of Old Red Sandstone, such as were common throughout the upper strata of the 
cave, but in the part we are now speaking of, limestone in rubble and in large blocks 
was much more frequent. These, as well as the sandstone lumps, were often cemented 
in a breccia to the roof and to the sides of the chimneys by the calcareous tufa, which 
was here very profuse, and which had formed upon and partly pervaded the earthy 
accumulations, descending along them in a sheet towards the outer part of the 
cave. In the left-hand chamber it had formed a white seam or floor upon the 
earthy debris. Above this, brown earth, indistinguishable from that below, was 
found, in places touching, the short, recent-looking stalactites that here alone 
depended from the roof. 
The stones and earthy contents of this cavity, as well as the calcareous tufa, 
justify us by their similarity to the materials of the first and second strata in the 
outer part of the cave in correlating them, and in supposing that the latter were 
derived from within. One striking difference, however, must again be noted. 
After the Irish elk’s jaw and ulna, found at twenty-three feet from the entrance, 
no ancient animal remains occurred further in, nor any traces of man. 
