The largest cavern ever discovered, at Carlsbad Cavern, N.M., is soon going to be explored.

Carlsbad Cavern is so large that that three sky-scrapers a half-mile apart could be built in the largest of its innumerable “rooms,” according to Mr. Nicholson, who was there once before, about a year ago. Only 22 miles of the cavern’s apparently limitless tunnels have been explored, revealing such natural beauties that President Coolidge established it as a national monument.

The stalagmites in the cavern tower 100 feet high. The age of the cavern was put at 60,000,000 years by Dr. Willis T. Lee of the National Geographic Society, after his survey three years ago.

The caverns were discovered fifteen years ago by a New Mexican cowboy named Jim White, according to Mr. Nicholson. White was riding across a desert waste one day when he saw what appeared to be smoke from a volcano. After riding three hours in the direction of the smoke he discovered that it was an enormous cloud of bats issuing from the mouth of a gigantic cavern. He decided the cavern deserved exploration, and a few years later he and a Mexican boy were lowered in a barrel over the 750-foot cliff which overhangs the cavern.

The stalagmites of the cavern, according to Mr. Nicholson, are very vibrant and resonant. One can play a “xylophone solo” on them with practice, he said, but it is dangerous, since a certain pitch would crack them.

The temperature of the cavern is 56 degrees Fahrenheit, never varies, day and night, winter and summer. The air is purified every twenty-four hours in some mysterious fashion, though there are no air currents. This is explained by the theory that there exists a great subterranean stream at a lower level, probably 1,200 feet down.

Specimens of stalagmites will be collected and reconstructed for the American Museum of Natural History. The explorers expect to find also flying fish, flying salamanders, rare insects and thousands of bats. A Government representative will go along, and drawings and motion pictures will be made.