210 GROTESQUENESS OF THE DRIP-FORMATIONS. 



ed at their ends far beyond their size at the top, or take a slanting line; 

 then the stalagmite underneath learns also to lean in the same direction, 

 so that when they meet it will be at the intersection of two angular lines 

 of growth. A notable example of this process is seen in the " Tara's 

 Harp" and its snow-white feeder. 



Chief of all the varieties, however, and the one that in lavish profu- 

 sion is to be seen everywhere in these caverns, is that which, by grow- 

 ing on the edges only, produces not a round, icicle form, vertically pend- 

 ent,, but a wide and thin laminated or sheet form, which is best described 

 by its semblance to heavy cloth hanging in pointed folds and wrinkles, 

 as a table-cover arranges itself about a corner. This is most likely to 

 happen where the water flows over the edge of a ledge, or comes down 

 through a crack rather than by percolation through needle-point aper- 

 tures, or where it oozes from the side-walls. Now the heterogeneous 

 nature of this limestone, mixing masses of harder or more gritty sub- 

 stances with other fractions of a softer kind, caused it to be eroded un- 

 equally, and everywhere enormous angular masses, resting on a softer 

 substratum, have been undermined until they fell to the floor, stood out 

 from the walls as protruding ledges, or were cut out from their connec- 

 tion with the wall-rock, and left standing as islands to be coated and re- 

 shaped and hidden away under the glittering panoply which the gnomes 

 who did the work hastened to throw over every bit of common rock 

 within their industrious reach. It is this channelling through soft rock 

 and leaving hard limestone alone ; this chipping away overhead and un- 

 derneath a resisting stratum ; this tumbling heedlessly down and sedu- 

 lously piling up ; this everlasting, tireless labor after grotesque change 

 which is not yet, nor ever will be, content — these give to Luray its laby- 

 rinthine lack of shape, its chaotic multiplicity of things completed and 

 things half done, and things not yet more than mere material, which 

 mark it to the imagination as a workshop, or a last hasty refuge, or an 

 unarranged storehouse of the art-workers of the underworld, who, sur- 

 prised by the light of intruding day and the inquisitive, commonplace 

 eyes of men, fled affrighted to some yet more profound habitation in 

 ■the depths. 



Fancy has taken the bit in her teeth, as she is most likely to do down 

 here ; but what I started out to show was, that where ledges and table- 

 dike surfaces were so abundant, there the drapery was sure to form. In 

 the Market it crowds the terraced walls in short, thick, whitish fringes, 

 like so many fishes hung up by the gills — "rock-fish" the guide will tell 

 you, as his little joke. The Saracen Tent is formed by these great, flat, 



