84 
exquisite. From this cavern we could find no opening of 
any length or depth save the one by which we had entered 
it, although we very carefully explored it. There is an 
absurd local tradition of an old woman’s goose which fiew 
down, and was given up as lost, but which subsequently re- 
appeared at the mouth of the Peak Cavern, at Castleton. 
The sagacious and enterprising bird must have been much 
cleverer than we were. 
There can be no doubt that this chasm has been formed 
by the chemical action of carbonic acid in water, and that 
it has attacked this particular spot either from the unusual 
softness of the rock originally situated here, or because there 
was here a joint or shrinkage in the strata. There is nothiug, 
however, in the position of Elden Hole to lead one to 
suppose that any stream has ever fiowed through it; no 
signs of such a state of things appear anywhere around. 
In this it differs from the numerous water swallows of the 
neighbourhood, and from the pot-holes of North-West 
Yorkshire. It is not related to any valley or ravine, or to 
any running water, and there is, as observed, an absence of 
any well defined exit for water at the bottom. No 
mechanical action of a flowing stream can therefore have 
assisted the process of enlargement. 
That so deep a chasm should be entirely isolated is cer- 
tainly remarkable, because it cannot be said to represent a 
“weak point towards which the rainfall has converged.” 
It must, therefore, be due to the gradual silent solvent 
properties of rain-water falling on the surface, and escaping 
through jointings and insignificant channels in the hard 
rocks below. Whether the excavation took place from 
above or below is uncertain. Applying the rule “ a ravine 
is a cavern open to the sky,” such an abyss is simply a 
perpendicular cave whose roof has at length fallen in. But 
there are many shallow funnel-shaped depressions in the 
limestone to which this rule will not apply, and which have 
