344 CAMERON : SUBSIDENCES OVER PERMIAN BOUNDARY. 
There is one very fine pit in soft brick red sandstone rock, 
just outside the Railway Company's boundary at Ripon Station. 
The visible depth is between 30 and 40 feet, but the actual depth 
probably far more. Water covers the bottom, and is said to flow 
across, but I have not been able to see any motion in the water. 
The top of the pit is not much wider than at the water level. The 
form of the inverted cone is however the usual shape of these pits, 
as where there is any thickness of soil over the rock, this falls in 
from all sides and widens the top circumference. 
A sailor is reported to have gone down a pit in search of 
some sheep that had fallen over, and were lost among-st the debris 
at the bottom. He quickly " shouted manfully " to be taken out, 
there being such a powerful air current as threatened to draw 
him down the perpendicular opening that was partially choked by 
the tumbled masses of sandstone. 
A pit fell in 10 years ago, on Hutton Bank, after a waggon 
load of timber had passed over the spot ; water remained two or 
three days at the bottom. The sides are now all smoothed and 
grown over with grass, and a drain pipe made* to run down one 
side, the contents rapidly disappearing on reaching the bottom of 
the pit. 
In Ripon there are many large hollows that have doubtless 
once been swallow holes, now cultivated and turned into gar- 
dens, and exceedingly beautiful and picturesque they are, with 
ornamental summerhouses and grottos. Villas and other buildings 
are fearlessly erected about them. 
There are a number of pits or " shoots " as the people call 
them, about Sutton -Ho wgrave. A " shoot" took place in a field 
near the village about eight years since. There is a man living 
there now, who was in the field at the time of the fall. He told me 
he heard a noise like the wall of a house falling in ; on going to 
the place, he saw a hole where "water was all bubbling and 
frothing all over;" this soon quieted down, but there has been a 
