The greater
age of the rocks indicates the possibility of earlier excavation while
their undisturbed position suggests that destruction resulted, not from
violent earth movement, but from the slow action of agencies requiring
long periods of time.

Before proceeding to a discussion of the caves visited personally for
the gratification of private interest, it is desirable to know what
attention has been given to the subject, incidentally, in the course of
regular official duty on the Missouri Geological Survey.

CAVES DESCRIBED IN THE STATE REPORTS.

Although many unknown caves must yet be discovered in the imperfectly
explored portions of the vast Ozark forests, these finds are already so
numerous as to seldom attract attention according to their just
desserts.

One of the comparatively recent of these discoveries is Crystal Cave, at
Joplin, described on page 566, Vol. VII., Missouri Geological Survey
Report 1894.[1] It was opened in the lower workings of a shaft of the
Empire Zinc Company, and "The entire surface of the cave, top, sides and
bottom, is lined with calcite crystals, so closely packed together as
to form a continuous sheet and most of them of great size, and well
formed faces. Scalenohedra as much as two feet long are sometimes seen,
and others a foot or more in length are common. Planes or crystal
ghosts, sometimes with pyrite crystals, marking stages of growth in the
calcite crystals, are often distinguishable. The entire absence of
anything like stalactites is noticeable, and together with the presence
of the crystals, show that the cave was completely filled with water
during their growth." In the same volume, all those counties in the
extreme southwest corner of the state, whose geological age has not
heretofore been considered positively determined, are mapped as Lower
Carboniferous, and Lower Silurian, with the Coal Measures covering
portions of Barton and Jasper and appearing in a few small, scattered
spots in Dade, Polk, Green and Christian counties, and some scanty lines
of Devonian fringing the edges of the Silurian in Barton and McDonald.

Other State reports make mention of many caves and fine springs, and
also several natural bridges worthy of special notice. In Mr. G.C.
Broadhead's report for 1873-1874, he gives a short but interesting
chapter on caves and water supplies, in which he says that "Caves occur
in the Third Magnesian Limestone, Saccharoidal Sandstone, Trenton,
Lithograph