22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.42. 



crystal clear water, swarming with many-colored fishes. To a natu- 

 ralist the natural highways of the small streams are extremely profit- 

 able in the dry season, when the higher land is as dry as dust. Birds, 

 mammals, and insect life necessarily seek the limited areas of hu- 

 midity along the creeks. 



The brook leading to the cave was at the time of the visit — April 

 14, the ver}'^ end of the dry season — a series of stagnant pools. For 

 the first 300 or 400 feet the bed is 25 to 30 feet wide and fairly smooth 

 limestone, vdih gullies and potholes a foot or two deep; then the 

 guUies deepen and the rock is cut out in fantastic longitudinal curved 

 and twisted shapes. Near the cave these gullies are very deep and 

 narrow and were plainly at one time part of the cave, of wliich the 

 roof now has fallen in. The gullies lead to the mouth of the cave, 

 which is some 20 feet high and 8 feet in width, with water nearly waist 

 deep. Dm'ing the rainy season it would be impossible to enter this 

 part of the cave. The passage soon forks and one branch runs some 

 200 feet straight east, with various narrow cross-passages at right 

 angles, which are again crossed at right angles by numerous similar 

 channels resembling the streets in a city. By keeping to the right 

 one comes round a block, back to the starting point. There appeared 

 to be some 20 such large blocks, but there may be many more. Some- 

 times the passages are several feet in width and 20 to 30 feet or more 

 high, with breast-deep water; other passages were narrow, low, and 

 dry. Bats nearly everywhere, the roof either hung with them or 

 with stalactites or covered by a deUcately formed layer of lime deposit, 

 scintillating in the light of the lantern ; in two or more places, narrow 

 chimneys leading to the green world above. 



The other main passage to the left from the mouth of the cave leads, 

 after being cut by several cross alleys, tlirough a place where the roof 

 of the cave has fallen down some 60 feet to another quite different part of 

 the cave, a dry long room nearly 40 feet wide and from 30 to 50 feet liigh. 

 About 400 feet in fi-om the mouth of tliis cave was a large, uninviting 

 stagnant pool reeking with bat manure and too deep to cross without 

 swnmming. By the faint light of the lantern it could be seen that 

 tlie cave continues on the other side of the pool to the left. The cave 

 at this point was some 60 to 70 feet high. Thousands of bats of 

 several^ species swarmed in and out, and a few samples were secured 

 in the insect net, stunned, and placed in tight tin boxes in order to 

 secure their numerous parasites at leisure at home. 



Through a very narrow and low channel to the right, about the 

 middle of this cave, where it was necessary to crawl on all fours for 

 some 80 or 100 feet, a tliird and still larger cave was reached — an 

 enormous amphitheater some 250 feet in diameter with a low hemi- 

 spherical roof 20 feet over the floor in the middle, hung with large and 

 small delicate stalactites never touched by human hands. 



