LIMESTONE 
93 
northwards, looked at first sight the very places for delightful 
trout-streams, yet no vestige of a brook or rill even is to be seen 
in them. The rain that descends passes through the crevices 
of the limestone, to burst up in springs in the lowlands, some of 
which are of large size and come up in the Grut River, forming a 
sort of lake, the principal one being Midgell Pits in the parish 
of Chelvey, which I have rowed through many times in a punt. 
It is, or was, some twenty or thirty yards across, and is popularly 
said to have no bottom ; the water is very cold even in summer, 
and the ground around is marshy and covered with trees, 
flags, &c. 
I speak of what this spring was, for I have not seen it foi 
many years, but notice passing on the railway that the stream 
of water coming from it (for it is on a branch of the river) is 
much reduced by pumping from wells for the Bristol water- 
works. This pumping has done much good to the moor by 
reducing flooding, which was very extensive forty years ago. 
We used then in some winters to have miles of skating. 
There are other large springs further down tlie river, and 
one at Claverham sending a stream through that village, and 
other smaller ones nearer the hills. Clear water can always be 
found near the surface in the lowlands. 
I have said that the coombes contain no streams, and we 
never found any pebbles or rounded stones to indicate the pre- 
sence of running water. Still, twice in my life-time has water 
burst forth from the hill-sides after prolonged rain, which has 
overcharged the subterranean channels. I remember when I 
was quite a youngster my father driving me to the head of 
Brockley Coombe to see where the water had come out and run 
down the coombe. I fancy he went as a member of the High- 
way Board to see if any damage had been done, but none had. 
Again, four or five years ago, one of my brothers took me 
half a mile up Goblin Coombe to show me the head of a stream 
that he had a short time before seen running for a couple of 
days, when it stopped ; here almost no trace of its existence had 
been lefr. The stream had issued where the edge of a large flat 
rock, rising a hundred feet or more above the bottom of the 
coombe, entered the ground at our feet at an angle of about 
thirty-five degrees with the horizontal. I thought then that the 
rain percolating on to this table, which probably extended for a 
considerable distance into the side of the valley, might have 
caused the overflow, and this coupled with a full subterranean 
stream may have been the case. 
.As to caves in limestone rock, I have been in many of these 
in Derbyshire and elsewhere. They can be visited by anybody ; 
but the following account of a newly-discovered cayern in private 
grounds in Devonshire may possess some novelty. 
Some eighteen years ago, one afternoon my brother-in-law, 
Mr. Thomas Bulteel, of Radford, near Plymouth, was shooting 
in his woods with his keeper. After a time the man, who had 
