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Updated: June 6, 2025
The water contains a certain proportion of carbonate of lime, which is deposited as stalagmite as the water evaporates, and thus a ring-like crust is produced at a little distance from the spot where the drop falls. When a ring is once formed, it limits the spread of the drop, and determines the position of the wall bounding the little pool made by the drop.
In one place, near at hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead.
The floor of the cave gradually rises by the accumulation of sand and travertine, and with it rise the walls and floor of the cup by the deposit of successive layers of stalagmite produced by the drop percolating into the limestone of the floor which hardens it still further, but in this peculiar symmetrical way.
In some passages, as before stated, stalagmite was wanting, while in one place seven or eight alternations of stalagmite and loam were observed, seeming to indicate a prevalence of more rainy seasons, succeeded by others, when the water was for a time too low to flood the area where the calcareous incrustation accumulated.
The other hand hung listless, half open, and from it had dropped a brush that formed a small stalagmite at her side. Bending over her in most striking contrast was the figure of a young man, all instinct with life, power, and feeling. Though the face was turned away, Dennis had suggested his own form and manner.
And then both went eagerly to take liberties with a neighbouring pump, from the spout of which hung an icicle like a stalactite, the droppings from which, at an earlier period, had formed a considerable stalagmite on the stones below.
But the hard, and far more ancient, limestone, onto which we then passed, was quite as bad. At the very summit of one hill of this we found a cave close by the road; entering it, we penetrated to a distance of perhaps seventy-five feet, finding the roof hung with stalactites and the walls sheeted with stalagmite.
Thirdly, the change in the course of rivers which once flowed through caves now removed from any line of drainage, and the formation of solid floors of stalagmite, must have required a great lapse of time.
The floors are covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial clay, over which rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the droppings from the roof since the time when the clay-bed was laid down. In the instances above specified, and several others, there have been found, under the clay bed, assemblages of the bones of animals, of many various kinds.
If they were not all of contemporary date, it is clear from this case, and from the humerus of the Ursus spelaeus, before cited, as found in a floor of stalagmite, that the bear lived after the flint tools were manufactured, or in other words, that Man in this district preceded the cave-bear.
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