THE CAVERNS. 
143 
becomes coated with a deposit removed from another part. In 
the conrse of time it will happen, under circumstances 
favourable for their formation, that the whole of a large district 
of limestone rock becomes so completely intersected by passages 
and chambers, and these are so affected by the removal of the 
surface in some places by chemical action, the wearing in other 
places by mechanical action, and the renovation everywhere by 
the deposit of successive films of limestone, as to give an 
appearance of artificial construction of the most complicated 
kind. 
The deposit of successive films of limestone is generally very 
systematic. It produces three distinct appearances, which we 
may describe as stalactites, stalagmitic masses, and stalagmitic 
beds or strata. 
Stalactites are the drooping pendants and curtains that 
depend from the roofs of limestone caverns. Wonderfully 
beautiful and picturesque are they, when seen, undimmed by 
smoke and dirt, in caverns that have not yet become celebrated, 
or in parts of large caverns rarely visited. Marvellous forms, 
the precise cause of which it seems almost impossible to trace, 
excite the imagination and suggest resemblances to all kinds of 
familiar and unfamiliar objects. The simplest of all are the 
grouped cylinders and cones of transparent cream-coloured 
stone, thousands of Avhich, sometimes detached and sometimes 
touching each other, mark Avhere there have been crevices 
through which water has oozed. When a number of drops 
have fallen from an extended line, a curtain is formed, Avith 
occasional fringes of the same stone. Where there have been 
drops long falling from a point where the drip is continuous, 
the pendant is on a grand scale, it grows doAvmvards rapidly, 
it assumes large proportions, and becomes part of a columnar 
mass. Meanwhile, the whole of the water has not been got 
rid of at the roof, but a part has fallen to the floor and evapo- 
rated there. A base has been formed below, while the capital 
of the column was being traced out above. As the slender 
shell of stone, at first not thicker than the film that gives colour 
to a soap-bubble, assumes by degrees larger proportions, many 
drops combining in one spot, and all together tending to pro- 
duce an inverted cone suspended from the roof, so in the same 
way does the work go on below — enlarging and spreading out, 
and, at the same time, rising in a conical form, until at last the 
tAvo portions meet, point to point, and the column becomes 
complete. Sheets or curtains of stone, gradually thickening, 
but remaining translucent, are occasionally formed by a number 
of columns touching each other. These sometimes serve as 
walls, separating into compartments the chambers in which they 
are formed, and not unfrequently we meet Avith fantastic masses 
