'a taste of KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 229 



remarkably smooth — one can drive with a buggy 

 with perfect ease and freedom anywhere througli 

 these woods. The ground is as smooth as if it had 

 been rolled. In Kentucky we are beyond the south- 

 ern limit of the glacial drift; there are no surface 

 bowlders and no abrupt knolls or gravel banks. An- 

 other feature which shows how gentle and uniform 

 the forces which have moulded this land have been 

 are the beautiful depressions which go by the ugly 

 name of "sink-holes." They are broad turf-lined 

 bowls sunk in the surface here and there, and as 

 smooth and symmetrical as if they had been turned 

 out by a lathe. Those about the woodlands of Colo- 

 nel Alexander were from one to two hundred feet 

 across and fifteen or twenty feet deep. The green 

 turf sweeps down into them without a break, and 

 the great trees grow from their sides and bottoms 

 the same as elsewhere. They look as if they might 

 have been carved out by the action of whirling wa- 

 ter, but are probably the result of the surface water 

 seeking a hidden channel in the underlying rock, 

 and thus slowly carrying away the soil with it. 

 They all still have underground drainage through 

 the bottom. By reason of these depressions this 

 part of the State has been called "goose-nest land," 

 their shape suggesting the nests of immense geese. 

 On my way southward to the Mammoth Cave, over 

 the formation known as the subcarboniferous, they 

 formed the most noticeable feature of the landscape. 

 An immense flock of geese had nested here, so that 

 in places the rims of their nests touched one another. 



