in thickness and as yellow as jasper. We measured one that arose eighty feet from what we regarded as its base to the ceiling, and found it twenty-six feet in its longest diameter Descending into a pit, we found what we named the Catacombs, opening into an avenue about three miles long.

The acoustic properties of Echo River passage-way are extraordinary. This body of water is said to be rather less than one mile in length and to be forty or fifty feet deep. The continued arch of natural masonry by which it is spanned, varies in height from three to thirty feet. The echo is a musical prolongation of sound, rather than a distinct repetition of words, although this also may be obtained. Harmonics were produced in reponse to certain key-notes. A strong vocal impulse was prolonged with sustained vigor for fifteen seconds, and in the opinion of others for a longer time; the duration depending much on our location on the water, the purity of tone, the pitch and the energy of the original aerial vibrations. silently but forcibly pushing the water to and fro with a broad paddle, successive wavelets were sent into numerous marginal cavities, awakening chimes that continued for from three to ten minutes according to the violence of the agitation, dying away as the river regained a state of quiescence.

By

The average temperature of the cave has long been reported incorrectly to be 59° Fahr. Temperature observations were made by us in all parts of the cave that we visited, using a thermometer from the Tower Company, Chester, Pennsylvania, which indicated 88° in the hotel office (August 19th, 1878,) and 66° at the cave's mouth. We were careful to suspend the instrument by its ring in each instance, and to hold it at a distance from the person and the lamp; particulars about which others may not have taken sufficient pains. The mercury stood highest in the Rotunda, where it reached 58°. The lowest temperature was found in Lucy's Dome, namely, 54°. It was 57° in three places; but in forty-two observations the mercury stood at 56 The water in all the rivers was also at 56°, instead of at 54°, as often stated. In three springs the mercury fell to 53°, and in one, Richardson's Spring, to 52°, which was the lowest degree marked anywhere. The temperature of the rivers is identical with that of the atmosphere over them; the apparent difference being due to variation in conductivity. The average temperature of the cave may be fixed at 56°.

4. Wyandot Cave. The entrance to Wyandot cave is in Crawford County, Indiana, half a mile from Blue River and five miles from the Ohio. A map of the cave was prepared by Dr. Talbot in 1852, revised by me in 1854, and published in Owen's Indiana Geological Report, in 1860. A new map is shortly to appear noting corrections and recent discoveries. The length

of the cave is twenty-three miles, including all the avenues. It has many fine halls and domes, the largest of which has a circumference of 1,000 feet, and is said to be 205 feet high. The name has hitherto been Mammoth Hall; but it is now re-named Rothrock's Cathedral, to avoid confusion, and also as a tardy recognition of the worthy man who originally purchased the place from the government and left it as a heritage to his sons. Wyandot Cave should be visited even by those who have already explored the greater cavern of Kentucky; for it is far richer in stalactitic ornamentation, although less abounding in gypsum rosettes or "oulopholites." The stalactites are of the fine-grained translucent kind often called alabaster, and much resembling the Mexican onyx.

Thermometrical observations, made by the same instrument and methods used in Mammoth Cave, showed that, while the temperature of the outer air was 76°, that of Wyandot Cave averaged 55. The highest temperature was found in the Pillared Palace, 57°; the lowest in the Wyandot's Council-room, 54°; elsewhere, out of twenty-two observations, an equal num. ber indicated 55° and 56°. In two springs the water was found to have a temperature of 52°, and in one of 54°. Thus, instead of being, as has often been said, 6° colder than Mammoth Cave, we found it only half a degree colder.

An important discovery was made last April by a party of students from Wabash College, led by Mr. C. E. Milroy. Forcing their way through a low, narrow passage for fifty feet from a locality marked on the map as the Rugged Pass, they entered a realm of chaos, named, after its discoverer, Milroy's Temple. Pits, miry banks, huge rocks, are overhung by galleries of creamy stalactites, vermicular tubes intertwined, frozen cataracts and all in short that nature could do in her wildest and most fantastic mood. Among the many curiosities of this extraordinary place is a row of musical stalactites, very broad and thin, on which a chord can be struck or a melody played by a skillful hand. This discovery has stimulated research. We ourselves followed the guide through a trench dug by him in a clay-bank, into a chamber where the floor was thickly strewn with charred fragments of hickory bark, and two torches long extinct were sticking in a crevice in the low ceiling. The tracks of some wild beast were also found which led us to name the place the Wolf's Lair. The roof seems to have fallen in since the torches were left here; and our compass told us that the closed avenue must have led to Banditti Hall, within 1,200 feet of the mouth. Animals of various kinds are known to have frequented this cave in former days. We saw the skeleton of an opossum and also of a wild cat, besides many stout poles from five to eight feet long, marked by sharp teeth in some ancient contest. "Bear-slides" are shown in several

places, where the rocks are blackened and polished as if by the rubbing of fur. "Bear-wallows," are also pointed out; but on our recent visit we discovered this to be a misnomer.

Bands of black flint are found in the limestones of the south arm of the cave, sometimes in continuous belts, but oftener in rows of nodules varying in size from one to ten inches. Occasionally they have a geodic form and a crystalline center, showing that the siliceous particles had collected about a fossil nucleus. Between these belts, or rows, is usually a chalky substance easily cut with the knife or even by the finger nail. The so-called "bear wallows" are where the flint is most abundant and of the best quality, as near the Pillared Palace.

Beside each depression is a pile of ashes with bits of hickory bark. Digging into the wallow, quantities of flint chips were brought to light. Piles of flint blocks abound in which were hundreds of them, each piece having parallel faces, and averaging four inches in length, one or two inches in width and onehalf inch in thickness. It was evident to me that they were split by the Indians from the oval nodules as materials for arrow tips or spear heads. We found quartz pounders with which the splitting may have been done; but no manufactured articles except a small saucer cut from sandstone which had once held some black substance. The place was plainly a mine and not a factory. Our search at the mouth of the cave was rewarded by the discovery of quantities of flint chips and also a number of finished arrow heads.

Indian foot-prints were visible in all parts of the new cave when first explored; and I saw them in 1854, although now they are obliterated. The cane torches, so abundant at "Chief City" in Mammoth Cave, which were supposed to be filled with bear's fat when ready for use, are rarely found in Wyandot Cave, which seems to have been lighted by bundles of hickory bark ignited by splinters of various kinds of wood.

What is known as the "Old Cave" was worked by saltpeter miners in 1812, and sundry acts of vandalism have been charged on them, which it is more probable were done by the aborigines. The finest stalacto-stalagmitic column probably in the world is the Pillar of the Constitution at the end of the Old Cave, three miles from the mouth. It is 40 feet high, and 25 feet in diameter, and it rests on a base 300 feet in circumference. The weight of this immense mass of alabaster caused the subjacent rocks to settle, and this in turn cracked the base, opening crevices many yards long, and varying in width from two inches to one foot. A large segment has been cut from the base of this column. Starting from the crevices, an excavation was made cutting a mass from the base having an arc of thirty feet, and making a cavity into the pillar itself ten feet wide, seven feet high and five feet deep. This excavation has hitherto been

regarded as a deliberate plan of the miners to fell the column. But we have a different explanation to offer. Tracing the right edge of the cut we find it running underneath a stalagmitic wrapping, eight feet wide and ten inches thick at its thickest part. Inspection shows that drippings like those now healing this wound were at work before it was inflicted, and that the incision was made through a mass similar to that by which it is at present overlapped. Rothrock's experiments, carefully carried on for a long term of years, fix the rate of stalagmitic growth in this portion of the cave at one inch a century.* Hence the excavation, instead of being made in 1812 must have been completed a thousand years ago. Its age may exceed that, and it cannot be much less. Following the talus of pure white stones that have rolled down under the ledges of black limestone, we find them sometimes cemented over a cavity where nature has had time to produce groups of exquisite stalactites since the quarry was worked, confirming the explanation above given. Further search enabled us to discover the tools with which the ancient workmen wrought, whoever they were, namely, numerous round or oblong granite bowlders, extremely hard, and of a size suitable to be grasped by the hand or twisted in a withe and swung as a maul. They could not have been carried to the end of the cave by the action of water, for it is twenty feet higher than the mouth. The region, moreover, is south of the line of Glacial drift. It seems certain, hence, that they were brought from a distance by persons having access to no better tools. Their ends also are battered and whitened by use as pounders. No manufactured articles were found on the spot; and only shapeless disintegrated fragments were upturned at the mouth of the cave. It is our conclusion that from this alabaster mine, blocks of a convenient size were carried away, perhaps by successive generations, as a choice material for ornaments and images. Those who wrought here by torchlight may have been of the same race that dotted the Ohio valley with mounds, and whose era, according to Mr. C. C. Jones (Mon. Remains of Georgia, p. 59) was synchronous with the date of the mine as estimated in this article. Ornaments of alabaster have been repeatedly exhumed among Indian relics in the Southern States; and more careful research may find similar objects amid the tumuli of Indiana, though perhaps not abundantly. For alabaster, though a very durable material, when not exposed to the elements, is fibrous in its nature, and would be liable to decay amid the frosts and sunshine of ten centuries; as we know from the crumbling specimens found outside in the vicinity of the cave.

Dr. Binkerd's estimate of stalagmitic growth in Mammoth Cave fixed it at one inch in 7,500 years; which makes Rothrock's estimate seem very moderate indeed! (See Binkerd's Mammoth Cave, p. 54.)

ART. LVL-The Chinese Official Almanac; by Professor MARK HARRINGTON.

THIS document, highly important to about one-third of the human race, is issued annually in December and is carefully prepared by the Board of Astronomy, an important body, imperially appointed, presided over by a prince of the royal blood, and equal in dignity to any other government body in the empire. The Almanac is bestowed as a special act of grace by the emperor on the Coreans, Lewchewans, Annamites and other tributary states. As this publication is so highly respected by the Chinese it may fairly be considered as the representative of the highest state of astronomical science reached by them, and it is therefore worth our while to examine it carefully.

On examining one of these books we find it to consist of two distinct parts, the astronomical and the astrological, the latter being much more fully represented than the former. Taking up first the astronomical part, we find that eclipses of the sun and moon are not mentioned. These are not printed in the Almanac, but, as the writer was informed by an employee of the Astronomical Board, are computed and published just before their occurrence. It is well-known to foreigners resident in China that the predictions are never accurate, but are sometimes as much as an hour in error.

The times of sunrise and sunset are given for forty-eight days in the Chinese year. The dates are from three days to fifteen apart, and the intervals are smallest when the sun is changing his declination most rapidly. The times of rising and setting are very symmetrically arranged and the same hours are repeated from year to year. As it is the hour of rising and setting that is repeated, and as the Chinese month is the lunar one, the dates are changed each year. Were it not for typographical errors the arrangement would appear very accurate and neat. By examining the Almanacs for several years we are able to eliminate the blunders in the plates, and we then make out that the figures are the semidiurnal arcs of a star having a declination equal to that of the sun on the given date. This is easily seen from the accompanying table (A). The third year of Kuang Hsü began with the new moon in February, 1877, and each successive month with the successive new moons. The fourth year of Kuang Hsü began with the new moon of February, 1878, and the twelve months follow as in the preceding year.

It will be observed that in the rising and setting of the sun as given in this table the corrections are altogether absent.