382 Scientific ana General Memoranda. 



about thirty feet, they reached the bottom, where they found a 

 stream of Hmpid water, running south. Whilst pursuing the course 

 of this stream, they visited a spacious apartment, about twenty 

 feet broad, and more than a hundred feet high. In this room they 

 found the skeleton of an animal, believed to be a fox, which, per- 

 haps, having fallen through in some part, had died for hunger. The 

 stream led to a body of water, which, having no means of ex- 

 ploring, they returned upon their steps, and rejoined their friends. 

 In October, Mr. Gebhard, Mr. Bonny, and Dr. Foster, having 

 constructed a boat, contrived to get it afloat upon this subter- 

 ranean lake, and with other friends, having manned the boat, 

 navigated the lake for three hundred feet, through various passa- 

 ges, in one of which the water was thirty feet deep, and transpa- 

 rent to the bottom. At a shelving ascent on the right shore of the 

 lake, the water appeared to be lost by an invisible drainage. 

 They were here rewarded by the discovery of a very magnifi- 

 cent apartment, the description of which we shall borrow from an 

 account of -the adventure, drawn up, we presume, by one of the 

 party, and which a friend has forwarded to us in a number of 

 the Troy Cfintinel. 



" Advancing up the shelving ascent, about twenty feet, they entered an 

 aperture in the rock, directly in front, of about the size of an ordinary en- 

 trance to a house, where a scene, grand beyond description, burst upon the 

 view. They advanced through this opening into a vast amphitheatre, hitherto 

 untrod by mortal foot, which, from its perfectly regular and circular form, 

 obtained at once the name of the rotunda. Upon giving this apartment a par- 

 ticular examination, after the first feelings of surprise had subsided, they 

 found it about one hundred feet in diameter, and apparently more than a 

 hundred feet in height, regular in its form, the floor descending on all sides, 

 gradually, to the centre, and forming a spacious gallery around its whole 

 circumference, and enclosed alxjve by a horizontal roof The vast size of 

 this apartment, the magnificence ofkhe gigantic walls, and fretted roof, both 

 entirely encrusted with transparent crystals, which sent back the blaze of 

 the torches in a thousand different dyes, at once satisfied the beholders, that 

 they had penetrated into the very temple, in these hitherto unexplored realms." 



After freighting their little bark with a rich cargo of minera- 

 logical curiosities, they returned to the upper world, delighted 

 with the success of their voyage. 



Zoological Wealher Glass. — " At Schwitzingen, in the post- 

 house, we witnessed, for the first time, what we have since seen 



