to carry stones
weighing 3 or 4 pounds. The material varied--red clay, now jointed,
was the topmost layer; below it, in patches and layers, were dark
earth, resembling soil; clay of different shades of yellow, brown,
red, and gray, sometimes almost blue; some of it uniform, some of it
mingled, one or any or all of the different sorts in small compass;
deposits of one sort filling sharply defined channels or potholes cut
in some other sort; occasionally there was a slight admixture of sand.
All included limestone pebbles, which were plentiful in some deposits
but entirely absent from others, were weathered to a chalky
consistency, the larger ones to a depth of perhaps half an inch, the
smaller ones throughout. Scarcely any chert was included, although it
is abundant on the hill; the few pieces seen were very small.

It took five weeks of steady work, with two men, to clear out the
second level. In all this clay there was not the slightest trace of
bone or other indication that living beings of any kind had existed
either in the cave or in any place from which the clay had come.

At 24 feet from the eastern side of the trench, projections on the
face of the east wall denoted that bed rock was not far away. A hole 8
feet across, at the rear of the excavation, reached sand with a slight
admixture of clay a few inches under the level at which the work was
being conducted; and 4 feet down, or 17 feet from the top of the
talus, the rock was found. It was rough and furrowed, like a solid
stratum that has been long exposed to atmospheric weathering.

Further exploration was useless. The sand results from disintegration
of the Roubidoux sandstone belonging next above the limestone in which
the cave was formed. None of this remains on the hill; it has all been
carried away by erosion. There is not now any sink hole or crevice
above the level of the cavern through which the sand could have made
its way. Such an opening must have existed at one time, on the slope
at one side or the other, or farther back where the hill is now cut
off. In either case, erosion has carried away its walls and filled up
the channel leading from it, and thus obliterated its site. To
accomplish this would require a long time; enough to produce a
considerable alteration in the topography, and so to predicate for the
bottom deposits in the cave an antiquity far beyond the possible
appearance of man in the region.

PHILLIPS CAVE

The Phillips Cave fac