3^8 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1773. 



//. On the Cavern of Dunmore Park, near Kilkenny, in Ireland. By Mr. 



Adam Walker, p. l6. 



This cavern is situated in a fine plain, rising indeed here and there into small 

 hills. The country all round abounds with limestone, and quarries of beautiful 

 black marble, variegated with white shells. Different from those of Derbyshire 

 and Mendip, this cave descends perpendicularly 30 yards, from the top of a small 

 hill, through an opening 40 yards in diameter. The sides of this pit are lime- 

 stone-rock, whose chinks nourish various shrubs and trees, down which the 

 insjiector must descend with great caution. In this descent, he is amused with 

 flights of wild pigeons, and jackdaws from the cave below. When he reaches 

 the bottom, he sees one side of this pit supported by a natural arch of rock, above 

 25 yards wide, under which he goes horizontally, and sees two subterraneous 

 openings to the right and left. If he turns to the right, he makes his way over 

 rocks and stones, coated with spar in the most whimsical shapes, and formed 

 from the dropping roof, just as the dripping of a candle would cover a pebble. 

 These knobs take a fine polish, are transparent, and variegatetl with the wildest 

 assemblage of colouring. The Earl of Wandesford had one of them sawn into a 

 slab, and it is as beautiful as a moco. When these petrefactions are tried with 

 an acid, the effervescence is excessively strong; and as the earth all round is 

 calcarious, and the stones limestone, probably the icicle figures depending from 

 the roof, and these knobs, are thus formed. The rains that fall on the hill over 

 this cavern, oozing through an okery calcarious earth, and the limestone roof, 

 imbibe or dissolve their fine particles in their descent ; and as this mixture can 

 only filter through the rock exceedingly slow, the water hanging on the roof is 

 soon dissolved by the air, and the stony particles are left behind. Hence are 

 formed the icicle-shaped cones that hang from the roof; these growing perpetu- 

 ally longer, have, in many parts of the cave, met the knobs from the bottom, 

 and formed a number of fantastic appearances, like the pillars of a Gothic cathe- 

 dral, organs, crosses, &c. When the rain filters pretty fast through the roof, 

 it falls on the rocks below, and grows there into knobs and cones, whose vertex 

 points to those that impend from the roof. 



A spectator, viewing these, cannot but conceive himself in the mouth of a 

 huge wild beast, with ten thousand teeth above his head, and as many under his 

 feet. The scene is indeed both pleasing and aweful; the candles burning dim, 

 from the moisture in the air, just served to show a spangled roof perpetually 

 varnished with water, in some places upwards of 20 yards high ; in other places 

 they crawled on all-four, through cells that will admit only one at a time. After 

 having scrambled about 500 yards into this right hand part of the cave, they 

 returned to day light, and then proceeded to view the left hand part. Here 



