58 IN AND AROUND BESANCON. 
no stalactites or stalagmites worth noting. We went in about 
two hundred yards, but were told there were numerous ramifica- 
tions which had never been thoroughly explored. The young 
folks of the neighbourhood seem to hold high revel in this 
cavern, and the place fairly rang with their shouts and laughter, 
as some of them got left in the dark. The majority of us had 
varied marks of our close contact with the floor and walls when 
we emerged once more into the sunlight. Time does not permit 
of expatiating on the good qualities of the cuisine or the local 
wine served in the open air in the garden of the country inn. 
Another day we visited a cavern of more varied interest on 
one of the plateaux some miles from Besancon and near to the 
village of Hopital-du-Grosbois. After a long climb in the train 
we had to walk two miles to our destination. On the way we 
noted the fact that the vine-growing region had been left behind, 
and that cereals occupied the greater part of the cultivated 
ground. Hay was being taken in and various townsmen were out 
assisting their country cousins on their only off-day. Every here 
and there were depressions on the surface due to subsidences, the 
rock having been dissolved from underneath. The entrance to 
the grotto takes the form of a rent in the centre of a field, and 
we had to descend about seventy feet by means of a ladder. 
After that, a shelving tunnel leads down into the grotto proper. 
When some magnesium ribbon had been lit we could see at a 
glance that we were in an immense dome-shaped cavity of about 
fifty yards diameter and fifty yards in height. Here again was 
a little lake where one could gather peculiarly rough little bits of 
calcareous matter, not unlike bits of fish roe. Just beyond this 
sheet of water was a sinister-looking cavity with precipitous sides 
where the water found an outlet; it was supposed to reach a 
stream in the valley some miles off. On the plateau above there 
is no trace of a stream, the water being drained off into those 
caverns. The beauty of a grotto, however, consists in its 
stalactites and stalagmites, the latter being scattered every here 
and there over the floor of the place. Some of them were ten 
feet high and six feet through, and their formation points to a 
time when the dripping water must have been much greater in 
volume than at the present time. Then veil-like draperies and 
buttresses surround the stalagmites on all sides. In the 
magnesium light they showed up with marble whiteness, but when 
