Mr. Balch and I cast lots for the honour of the first descent: it fell to me. An Alpine Club rope was tied on as life-line, whilst a 70-foot cotton rope was to be used for lowering and lifting. Slung in a bight of the latter, I was carefully let down over the cliff-like face below the entrance. The cavity formed part of a huge choked swallet, which extended up into the hill above the point where we had been working, and ran away obliquely underneath, so that I was coming down from a hole perforating one corner of the roof. Over against the hole was the steep slope of earth and scree already mentioned, steep almost as a wall, and the scree so loose that it seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. As soon as one came into contact with the treacherous stuff, an avalanche of stones was launched, and I sought in vain for a spot where it would be safe to unrope and await the next man. The cliff down which I had been lowered was undercut by a wide archway, through which I looked into a black, forbidding pit gaping at the bottom. With nowhere to rest, and with the risk of falling stones, it was obviously wiser to finish the descent before another man started. Tying the loose rope round me (for it was necessary to swing out under the arch), I was let down slowly, and began to slip over a smooth, greasy rock-face into the unknown cavity. At 60 feet from the ground I alighted at the top of a slope of stones, and was able to remove the ropes and scramble to the bottom. Lighting some magnesium wire, I found myself in a bell-shaped chamber about 65 feet high, opening above by the precipitous archway into the upper cavity, and on the other side into an ascending vault running north-west. All around were the indelible marks of water action in the remote past. On the upper side the rocks were carved and pitted as by the swirling of a violent torrent. But there was now no sign of running water, only the drip, drip from the moist roof; and the outlet of the ancient stream at the bottom of the cavern was blocked up by a deep accumulation of débris. Among the countless fragments strewn all over the floor I found a large stone covered with a mass of dog-tooth crystals, clear as diamonds and large as walnuts. But at the very bottom of the place was something even more lovely, myriads upon myriads of exquisite spicules of carbonate, some little more than specks of red, orange, and amber, but thousands like wee tendrils of coral three-eighths of an inch in length. They were the growth, through age after age, of a splash deposit from the roof or from the stream that had disappeared. Such a formation is not rare in water caverns; but in such beauty of shape and hue it is rare indeed, for these tender little crystal flowers took all manner of forms, blossoming ofttimes into wreaths and clusters like a miniature coral. One of the most exquisite and most puzzling features was that the dots and spicules were often arranged in set