FARM SCENE IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHENANDOAH, VIRGINIA.—The war between the States found the valley of the Shenandoah an ideal pastoral country, of rich and beautiful farms, of wealthy and aristocratic families, where life in its ease and sunshine rivaled that in older lands. The war left it a bare, blackened and blasted region, its homes destroyed, its farms desolated, and its able-bodied population decimated in the field. But it has fully recovered again. Grass and grain have woven Nature’s beautiful covering over all the scars of battle, and once more the fields and orchards are laden with flowers, while the lowing of the cattle and the song of the contented husbandman are heard in place of the discordant drum and the ruthless clash of arms. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ “The dimensions of the various chambers included in Luray Caverns cannot be given, on account of the great irregularity of their outlines. Nor can their size be estimated from a diagram, because there are several tiers of galleries, and the vertical depth, from the highest to the lowest, is two hundred and sixty feet. The tract of one hundred acres, owned by the Luray Cave Company, covers all possible modes of entrance, and the explored area is much less than that. The waters of this cavern appear to be entirely destitute of life; and the existing fauna is quite meager, comprising a few bats, rats, mice, spiders, flies and small centipedes. When the cave was first entered the floor was covered with thousands of tracks of bears, wolves and raccoons, most of them probably made long ago, as impressions in the tenacious clay that composes most of the cavern-floor would remain for centuries. The traces of human occupation, as yet discovered, are pieces of charcoal, flints, moccasin tracks, and a single skeleton imbedded in a stalagmite in one of the chasms, estimated to have lain where found for not more than five hundred years, judging from the present rate of stalagmitic growth.”