4 ANIMAL LIFE OF CARLSBAD CAVERN 



served for years, and where the bats hang up on the 

 walls or ceilings for their winter sleep, are still more 

 attractive. Naturally, the greatest abundance of ani- 

 mal life is near the entrance to the cave where a trace of 

 twilight filters into the darkness, where some plant and 

 animal food falls in, and where lichens grow on the 

 exposed rocks, and moulds cover the damp floor and 

 decaying guano. Most of the insects and other small 

 creeping life of the cave are found in the first large hall 

 on either side of the main entrance, but some of the 

 cave crickets go to the farthest corners of the galleries 

 as do also the mice and cave cats or ring-tails. 



The main entrance to the cavern opens into the side 

 and near the top of a high limestone ridge, which rises 

 abruptly about one thousand feet above the valley 

 bottom and is reached by a well graded road leading up 

 some three miles of the picturesque Walnut Canyon to 

 the spring, and then over the top of the ridge to the 

 great western doorway. Another natural opening 

 about one thousand five hundred feet farther east is a 

 mere break in the roof, near which two elevator shafts 

 have been blasted out. The great western doorway 

 now occupied by the stairway for descent to the first 

 floor of the cavern is a wide, arched portal as pictur- 

 esque as it is suggestive of ominous depths, making a 

 fitting gateway to this subterranean world. Here in 

 the shelter of the high arched portal, the animals, from 

 Indians to bats, have gathered through the ages to 

 take advantage of the protection of darkness and the 

 warmth of the cave air, that varies but little through- 

 out the year. Here the recently built steps go down 



