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Updated: June 5, 2025
Von Buch has described a compact limestone at Lanzarote, which seems perfectly to resemble the stalagmitic deposition just mentioned: it coats pebbles, and in parts is finely oolitic: it forms a far-extended layer, from one inch to two or three feet in thickness, and it occurs at the height of 800 feet above the sea, but only on that side of the island exposed to the violent north-western winds.
At the entrance stood a white figure, which might easily be supposed to be an angel, guarding the entrance with a glittering sword, threatening all who should venture with profane hands into his sanctuary. Further on, projected in bold relief, was a colossal statue of a monarch, sceptre in hand. As they proceeded they passed groups of stalagmitic cones of all shapes and sizes.
Where are you?" he cried; and he looked about the place, up and down, but to all appearances, he was in a cul de sac, whose walls were dotted with the fossil stems of pentacrinites, over which stalagmitic petrifaction had gradually formed, looking as if dirty water had run over the walls in places, and hardened in the course of time to stone. "Here, Dummy!
Furthermore, some of the bones of extinct animals found beneath the stalagmitic floor of caves, in England and elsewhere, presumably of about the same age as the Siberian mammoths, still contain enough animal matter to produce a good strong stock for antediluvian broth, which has been scientifically described by a high authority as pre-Adamite jelly.
It was just as he had intimated: it suddenly turned off to the left, but beneath the shelving rock where we stood holding down our candles as far as we could reach; and if we wished to explore farther there was nothing for it but to scramble down some forty feet to where the water ran murmuring amongst the blocks of stone, here all glazed over with the stalagmitic concretion that had dripped from the roof.
There are, however, some dripping caverns incrusted with stalagmitic deposit. But conceive of the sponge of Troo acting as a filter through two thousand years and never renovated. Not the most impressive teetotal orator would make me a water drinker were I a citizen of Troo. At the summit of the hill is Le Puit qui parle, the Talking Well. It is 140 feet deep, and is shaped like a bottle.
This grotto is one of the most beautiful in the Pyrenees, and presents to the visitor a succession of vast halls with roofs that are curved like a dome, or are in the form of an ogive, or are as flat as a ceiling. It is easy to explore these halls, for the floor is covered with a thick stalagmitic stratum, and is not irregular as in the majority of large caves.
The back of the cave was occupied by a gleaming white stalagmitic column that certainly from below bore some resemblance to a human figure, but the floor of the cavern was so deep in birds' nests, and droppings of bats, leaves and branches, that it was not possible at the time to explore it. This, however, was done by M. Martel in 1905, but nothing of archaeological interest was found.
On the farther side of these columns there were signs of a considerable fall in the ice; and by making use of the roots of small stalagmitic columns of that material, which grew on the slope of ice, I got down into a little wilderness of spires and flutings, and found a small cave penetrating a short way under the solid ice-floor.
The floors of caves, from their being cemented into a nearly homogeneous mass by stalagmitic matter, are much harder than the ordinary porous blown limestone; and it seems that in many cases, after the rocks forming the walls and roof have been removed, disintegration has been at all events temporarily arrested by the floor.
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