e if left undisturbed; and that condition can easily be
secured with a few feet of wire netting.

To one side of this room is a most daintily beautiful alcove so
profusely decorated with fragile forms of dripstone that a passage
through it without causing damage is extremely difficult. This alcove is
about twenty-five feet in either direction, with a sloping floor almost
covered with stalagmitic growths above the earlier deposit of sharp
crystals, and many of these rise in slender columns to the glass-like
ceiling, which varies in height from three to six feet and is thickly
studded with small stalactites of both varieties--the pointed, solid
form, and those of uniform size, which are always hollow like a pipe
stem. The central ornament is the Chimes, a musical group of stalactites
which is scarcely more beautiful than Cleopatra's Needle, at a
distance of a few feet to one side, a transparent column four feet
in height and having an average circumference of seventeen inches.

[Illustration: The Chimes. Page 188.]

[Illustration: The Needle. Page 188.]

[Illustration: Tower of Babel. Page 189.]

The Abode of the Fairies is a similar, though smaller room, with The
Tower of Babel for a handsome show-piece. While this portion of the cave
is extremely attractive, the measurements given show that in comparison
with caves of other states the drip deposit here is too small to be
reckoned an important feature in itself, but in conjunction with the
miles of calc-spar that give the cave a character distinctly its own, it
well repays all attention.

Leaving Lake Room we enter a newly opened, long, dry passage to Slab
Room, where a comparatively recent earthquake has shaken down the
ornamental ceiling and spread it in great slabs over the floor; and
having since remained perfectly dry it has the appearance of being the
work of yesterday. This room is remembered as the one in which a party
of workers were lost, and one of their number gave a severe nervous
shock to the junior proprietor by suggesting that as he was acting as
guide and unable to lead them out, it was only right that he should be
the first victim to satisfy their hunger. A rescuing party with
extinguished candles was listening behind a rock to the blood-curdling
speech, and came forward to restore cheerfulness.

A long, irregular, frosty looking crevice called Jack Frost Streak,
conducts us from Slab Room and ends at Mold Ladder, on which we pause to
admire a w