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, Lithographic, Encrinital and St. Louis Limestone.”

“In Eastern and Northeast Missouri there have not been found many large caves in the Encrinital Limestone, but the lower beds of this formation in Southwest Missouri often enclose very large caverns; among the latter may be included the caves of Green County with some in Christian and McDonald.  Those in McDonald I have not seen, but they are reported to be very extensive and probably are situated in the Encrinital Limestone.”