At Bridgewater, where we had arrived one winter morning at sunrise, after a melancholious journey in unwarmed carriages across the flooded moors beyond Glastonbury, not a person had heard tell of a cave in the Quantocks. But the information we relied on, though a century old, was definite enough to warrant the hire of a trap to convey us and our apparatus to a certain lonely cross-road, seven miles away, in a corner of the broad parish of Bloomfield. Climbing steadily through Enmore, we found the cross-road on a hilltop 800 feet above the sea, hard by a homely tavern, where we got cider for ourselves and feed for the horse. To our west was the Beacon on Cotherstone Hill, and two miles farther the Fire Signal Pits on Will's Neck (1261 feet), the highest of the Quantock Hills. But of the red-deer country that lay around us we saw little, and less as the day wore on, for a cold sea-mist came rolling up from the Bristol Channel, and would have given us trouble in finding our cave, had not a guide appeared providentially. It was a tattered and weather-beaten countryman, who emerged from the tap-room and announced that he was the only person who knew anything about the cave. He dilated in glowing terms on its beauties—"It be very ornamental, sur, very ornamental." Fox by name and fox by nature, so he described himself—for he was both garrulous and egotistical—he was fond of burrowing into holes. That he was a poacher to boot, we had no reason to disbelieve after a few minutes' conversation. He led us by a veritable fox's path over fields and hedges, through a mist-drenched spinney, down to a dingle, where beetle-browed rocks overhung the entrance to the cave. A rusty iron gate barred the way, and was padlocked. Reynard proposed to make a journey of several miles, at our expense, to procure the key; but a broken link in the chain saved us time and cider.

There is not much Limestone on the Quantocks, and caves are a rarity. At this spot an outlier of Carboniferous Limestone lies in close contact with beds of Greywacke Slate—a very unusual conjunction, which prepared us for something new and strange in the way of crystallisations. Descending a few yards beyond the entrance, the main passage rises a little, and then drops gradually towards a stagnant pool, beyond which it is impossible to get. The length of this portion is only 140 feet, and the direction from north-east to south-west. Certain narrow passages, however, bore into the Limestone on the north, and extend their ramifications much farther. Only one of these seems to have been known before our visit. In the main passage, near the pool, is seen the special wonder of Holwell Cave, a brilliant display of arragonite crystals all over the roof. Arragonite usually occurs in massive deposits of satin spar, distinguished by a perfection of whiteness when newly split, a whiteness that grows dingy very soon if you try to keep specimens. Here it occurs in quite another form—the coralloid, known as flos ferri; thousands of filaments or spicules ramifying from centres, and looking as soft as cobweb, though as brittle as blown glass. This delicate product is often tinged with a pink stain like that of fluor-spar. Andrew Crosse, the electrician, who was carrying on his researches in the neighbourhood when Holwell Cavern was found about 1800, thought that the crystal might have been distorted by slow degrees into these fanciful shapes "through the invisible action of electric energy," an agent to which most mysterious natural processes have been attributed some time or another; but the fibrous arragonite, scientists tell us, is by no means abnormal. It all lies on the Greywacke part of the roof; the adjoining Limestone has no arragonite, but is incrusted with the usual sheets and bosses of calcite, mutilated somewhat by visitors who have taken away mementos.

"Ain't it ornamental, sur?" said our conductor; but his exclamations were still more enthusiastic when the magnesium ribbon lit up the millions of arragonite crystals that covered the roof with a glistering efflorescence. Then the flashlight blazed out, as our camera got into action, and the old man was speechless with amazement. He had known the cave, boy and man, all his life, but never before had he, or anyone else for that matter, gazed upon all its beauties. Several photographs were secured—among them the portrait of a sleeping bat clinging to the groining of calcite—and then the cave grew too smoky for further work. So we went off to explore.

First we climbed into an opening high up in the north wall. It seemed to run parallel with the main passage, and soon we beheld daylight in front. Ere we reached the open air, however, we came to a steep drop, and found that the branch had simply brought us back to the vestibule of the cavern. Another opening, near the entrance, running due north, proved more interesting, leading eventually to a bell chamber, floored, walled, and roofed with polished carbonate. Someone had reached this point twenty years ago, so dates and initials testified; but there were virgin passages branching off to left and right for us to investigate, as far as bodies of speleological slimness were admissible.

A squeeze through a crevice in the east wall led into a parallel tunnel, depressingly low and painfully narrow, which seemed to run on indefinitely to the north. The soft clay floor showed it was at times the path of a heavy stream. Northward, it shrank to a mere drain-pipe; southward it led by one joint and culvert to another, all at right angles, into other straight channels, all going in the same general direction. My companion stuck fast a little way beyond the first tunnel; I pushed on like a weevil into the maze of perforations, but met the same fate at last, not giving in, however, until I had been held as in a vice at one point for a good five minutes, with boot jammed, candle out, and no room to get my hand to the pocket where the waterproof matches were safely stowed away.

It was still possible to see a long way ahead, by candlelight and magnesium; and we made out that north of the known cave lies a whole network of dry waterways, the principal channels running due north, roughly parallel to the Limestone escarpment in which the cave mouth opens, and all connected together by rectangular branches. One channel brought us within view of daylight; but the crevice was too small for anything but a rabbit, and we had to return by the same arduous and abrading passages we had come by. As old Fox would have said, the things we saw were "very handsome," but we could not tempt him to enter this uncomfortable region.

E. A. B.