_ Galleries untrodden even by t 
“_ 7 On the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 337 
cave, Oct. 16th—-22d, for all the bats to be in winter quarters, as 
the season was very open and warm. Still in the galleries where 
they most abound, we found countless groups of them on the 
ceilings chippering and scolding for a foothold among each other. 
On one little patch of not over four by five inches, we counted 
forty bats, and were satisfied that one hundred and twenty at least 
were able to stand ona surface a foot square; for miles they 
are found in patches of various sizes, and a cursory glance satis- 
fied us that it is quite safe to estimate them by millions. In 
these gloomy and silent regions where there is neither change of 
temperature nor difference of light to warn them of the revolving 
seasons, how do they know when to seek again the outer air when 
the winter is over and their long sleep is ended? Surely he 
who made them has not left them without a law for the govern- 
ment of their lives. 
You may enquire what has formed the excavations of Mam- 
moth Gave. I answer clearly and decidedly wader and no other 
cause. No where else can we find such beautiful sculptured 
rocks as in Mammoth Cave; such perfect unequivocal and abun- 
dant proofs of the action of running water in corroding a soluble 
rock. The rough hewn block in the quarry, does not bear more 
distinct proof of the hammer and the chisel of the workman, than 
do the galleries of Mammoth Cave of the denuding and dissolv- 
ing power of running water. At Niagara we see a vast chasm 
evidently cut by water for seven miles, and still in progress, but 
We cannot see beneath the cataract the water-worn surfaces, nor 
the rounded angles of the precipice—while the frosts and rains of 
countless winters, have reduced the walls of the chasin itself to 
But in the Mam- 
moth Cave we see a freshness and perfection of surface, such as 
rivers, exactly as they were left thousands of years ago by the 
stream which flowed through them when Niagara was young. 
No angle is less sharp, no groove or excavation less perfect than 
it Was originally left, when the waters were suddenly drained off 
by cutting their way to some lower level. The very sand and 
rounded pebbles which pave the galleries now and formed the bed 
of the stream of old, have remained in many of the more distant 
, he foot of man. ‘The rush of ideas 
. Sxconn’ Szams, Vol. XI, No. 33.—May, 1851. 43 
