110 THE LAPSE OF TIME. 



antiquity, is itself permeated with films of stalagmite, a 

 conclusive proof of its gradual introduction. Over the 

 lower portions have been formed in succession three 

 solid stalagmitic floors, remnants of which have quite 

 lately been discovered still imbedded in the cavern 1 . 

 Let us for a moment consider what this implies. If 

 we transport ourselves to Matlock Bath in Derbyshire, 

 for the small fee of a penny, any one of its ' petrifying 

 wells ' 2 will be open to our inspection. In these curious 

 grottoes whatever object you please, natural or artificial, 

 be it skull or the cap that once covered it, be it basket 

 or bird, or shell or leaf, may be encrusted with a coating 

 of stalagmite. The inexperienced visitor would like to 

 place an object in the well, and to wait while the 

 ' petrifying' waters do their work. He is surprised to 

 find that in that case he must wait and watch for 

 months and years, while the slow persevering stream 

 falls upon his treasure with its ceaseless drip, drip, drip, 

 and that the work so slowly accomplished would not be 

 accomplished at all if the flowing of the stream were 

 hastened. Imagine, then, in this famous cavern of ours 

 what an interminable song, though an intermittent one, 

 must have been sung with this drip, drip, drip, through 

 ages and ages, to produce, as in one place it has done, 

 a solid stalagmitic mass full twelve feet in thickness. 

 Now, according to Usher's chronology, we have seven- 

 teen centuries from Adam to the Flood, and twenty- 



1 See Reports of British Association, 1868, p. 57, and 1869, p. 199, 

 by W. Pengelly, Esq., F.R.S. 



2 This is the popular name for them. They do not petrify the speci- 

 mens placed in them, but only coat them with stalagmite. 



