126 MOUTHS IN THE FACE OF VERTICAL CLIFFS. 
admission: these present mouths must have formed part of the 
interior of the caverns, before the matter which once filled the 
valleys had been swept away. When viewed on a correct map 
(see Plate XIX.), or looked at from the summit of a distant hill, 
these valleys appear hut as open gutters on the surface of a 
meadow, falling into a main gutter, by which the whole of their 
waters are carried off, in the same manner as the streams of the 
Esbach, the Weissent, and others pass off by the main valley of 
Muggendorf. The manner in which the present mouths of the 
caverns appear in the cliffs that flank these valleys will at once be 
understood by referring to Plate XVIII., c. e. x. where three of them 
are represented in the cliffs that flank the valley of the Esbach, near 
the castle of Rabenstein, and to the map at Plate XIX., in which the 
place of each cavern is correctly marked, and a view given of the 
mouth of the cave of Gailenreuth. 
From these preliminary observations on the district, I proceed to 
describe in detail a few of the most important caverns which it 
contains. I shall select five, and treat of them in the following 
order; first, Forster’s Hohle ; second, Rabenstein; third, Zahnloch; 
fourth, Gailenreuth ; fifth, Kiihloch. 
1—FORSTER’S HOHLE. 
This cave is situated near the village of Weischenfeld, in the 
steep and rocky slope that forms the right flank of the valley of the 
Zeubach. It was not till within these few years that it attracted 
