206 Miscellanies. 



After the liquid acid is obtained in the receiver, in order to prevent 

 the waste of the solid by being blown from the cup as it forms, I find 

 considerable advantage in having the cup made quite deep in proportion 

 to its diameter, and allowing the liquid acid to escape from the receiver 

 by as small a jet as possible. 



13. Alabaster in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. — After crossing 

 within the cave, several streams in boats, an apartment has been reach- 

 ed, the roof of which is decorated with the most gorgeous ornaments of 

 alabaster, so much like a work of art as to surpass credibility. They 

 are white and semi-transparent, and are thrown out froin the rock in 

 the form of rosettes, leaves, and curled enrichments of the composite 

 capital in architecture. I have not had the pleasure of visiting the lo- 

 cality myself, but send you this sketch from a collection of the orna- 

 ments which I have just seen in the cabinet of Miss Longworth of our 

 city. These were procured in a recent visit to the caves, by her sister, 

 Mrs. Anderson, who has given me a verbal description of " Cleaveland's 

 cabinet," as the compartment has been denominated. I was at first 

 at a loss to account for such beautiful formations, and especially for 

 the elegance of the curves exhibited. It is however evident that the 

 substances have grown from the rocks by increments or additions to the 

 base ; the solid parts already formed being continually pushed forward. 

 If the growth be a little more rapid on one side than on the other, a 

 well proportioned curve will be the result ; should the increased action 

 on one side diminish or increase, then all the beauties of the conic and 

 mixed curves would be produced. The masses are often evenly and 

 longitudinally striated by a kind of columnar structure, exhibiting a 

 fascicle of small prisms, and some of these prisms ending sooner than 

 others, give a broken termination of great beauty, similar to our form 

 of the emblem of " the order of the star." The rosettes formed by a 

 mammillary disk surrounded by a circle of leaves, rolled elegantly out- 

 ward, are from four inches to a foot in diameter. Tortuous vines, 

 throwing off" curled leaves at every flexure, like the branches of a chan- 

 delier, running more than a foot in length, and not thicker than the fin- 

 ger, are among the varied frost-work of the alabaster grottoes ; common 

 stalactites of carbonate of lime, although beautiful objects, lose by 

 contrast with these ornaments, all of their effect, and dwindle into mere 

 clumsy awkward icicles. In order to give yourselves and your readers 

 some idea of the acanthus-like curl of some of the leaves, I send you a 

 pencil sketch of one of them. It is the original scrap, and does the 

 subject great injustice ; you will readily see that there are several " un- 

 conformable" lines, as at a, not in the original, but mere awkward at- 

 tempts to hit the curve of beauty before me. Besides these there are 



