But little time was wasted in examining the silted-up entrance to Aveline's Hole and another cave mouth, and the next halt was made at Plumley's Den. Tying two Alpine ropes together, a pair of us descended this ancient pothole as far as the artificial pile of débris that blocks it up. One man was hit rather severely by a dislodged stone--a serious danger in caves of this sort--and in returning he dropped and smashed his acetylene lamp. The hole is effectually plugged, a tree and a quantity of stone having been flung in after Plumley's fatal mishap; and until Mr. Gibson carries out his proposal to remove the stones that block it, the 200 feet which are said, on doubtful authority, to lie beyond can never be explored. Mr. Gibson also proposes to bore a new entrance from the Combe into the lower series of caves at Goatchurch. Above Plumley's Den a magnificent rib of Limestone, like those at Matlock, springs nearly to the hilltop; and over the way a picturesque pile of crag comes out to meet it, and is known as the "Rock of Ages," from the tradition that Toplady, the divine, taking shelter under it from a storm, composed his famous hymn there. Still piloted by our kind host, we walked across Burrington Ham and saw the brook which we had heard babbling amid the silence of Goatchurch Cavern flowing out, a strong body of water, at Rickford Rising, after a subterranean course of about two miles from its sources high up on Black Down. Rickford Rising is in the Secondary beds, but a short mile up the beautiful Combe at whose outlet it lies, a Limestone ridge comes down to the road. Hard by the extremity is a hole in the rocky ground, now almost entirely choked with stones, but not so many years ago an open pit. It is known as the "Squire's Well." Here, in times of continuous rain, a body of water issues forth, often flooding the road. It seems to be connected with the water-channels that feed Rickford Rising, to which it acts as a safety valve. To open it would not be a very serious affair, and might discover something interesting. At the back of Mendip Lodge, on the hill immediately west of Burrington Combe, the hilltop is cut up by innumerable ravines ending in swallets, the water of which comes to light again in a large stream in the Yeo valley near Upper Langford, about a mile away. Several of these swallets look as if they would repay the trouble of a little excavation; and the size of the stream at the point of issue indicates the existence of large cavities in the line of its subterranean course. E. A. B. THE CORAL CAVE AT COMPTON BISHOP