times they hang down like gigantic icicles, and one of these is over sixty feet long, the dripping apex being only a few inches from the floor. In some places the stalactites resemble cascades, in others organs, and several are like statues, and have received appropriate names. Many of them are most curiously ribbed; others, again, have branches growing out of them at right angles a few inches long-a most puzzling phenomenon. There is a Moorish tent, in which fine white drapery hangs in front of a cave, a ball-room beautifully ornamented with snow-white stalactites, curtains, etc. Some of these, when struck, give out musical notes, and a tune can be played on them. A photograph of the Moorish tent and the curious pillars near it is here reproduced. The curtain is like alabaster, and when a lamp is held behind it, the effect is most beautiful. In many places there are stalagmitic floors, beneath which is clay filled with bones of bats, etc., and at one spot human bones are embedded in the floor under a chasm opening above. The print of an Indian mocassin is also shown petrified by the stalagmite. Rats and mice are found with very large eyes; and there are some blind insects and centipedes, as in the Mammoth Cave. Several miles of caverns and passsages have already been explored, but other wonders may still be hidden in its deeper recesses. The only caves in the world which appear, from the descriptions to surpass those of Luray are the Jenolan caves in New South Wales. The latter have all the curious and elegant forms of stalactites found at Luray, and in addition others of beautiful colours, such as salmon, pink, blue, yellow, and various tints of green, a peculiarity, so far as I am aware, found nowhere

else.

Returning to the station I went on to Waynesboro' Junction, where I dined, and had to wait two or three hours for the train on at 5 P. M. I took a walk on a wooded hill close by, but the only flower I could find was the little Epigaa repens, the only indication of spring. The appearance of the woods was no more advanced than with us in February; yet it was in the latitude of Lisbon! I reached Clifton Forge, where I had to stay the night, at 8 P. M., and found the hotel full, and

was sent to another-small, dirty, and ruinous. Next morning I was so unlucky as to lose my train by getting into the wrong one, which was standing ready on the line with steam up. The conductor, after seeing my ticket, stopped the train and set me down, telling me that if I walked back quickly I might be in time. But I had a heavy bag to carry, and a mile to walk, and arrived dripping with perspiration to find. that the train had gone, and there was no other till the same hour next day. I therefore wired to Mr. Edwards, and spent the day exploring the country for several miles around. Two or three miles up the valley I came to a fine gorge, where there was a good specimen of arched stratification. I came across a thicket of rhododendrons, the first I had seen wild. There was also some tulip trees with dry capsules, and the brilliant red maple in flower, as well as the yellow flowered spice bush, Benzoin odoriferum. There was an undergrowth of kalmia, and some of the deciduous trees were in leaf, but there were no herbaceous spring flowers and very few showing leaf in the woods.

The next day I left at 7 A. M., passing through a very interesting country, first among iron works in a rather flat, open valley, then along narrow winding valleys, then into a dry valley always rising towards the ridge of the Alleghanies, then through a tunnel into another valley, still going up among woods of firs and oaks, rather small and scraggy, till at 8.30 A. M. we passed the summit level by a tunnel, and soon got into a rather wide, deep valley with a stream flowing west, and at 8.40 reached White Sulphur Springs, in a pleasant basin surrounded by mountains, with a pretty church, neat houses, good roads, and gardens with painted wood fences! the first bit of an attempt at neatness I had seen since leaving Washington. Here were some fine fruit trees, and the grand ridges and mountains, wooded to the summits, reminded me of Switzerland, without its great charms-the lowland and upland pastures and snow-capped peaks. Soon the valley widens, the rock becomes a highly inclined schist or slate, cultivated fields are more numerous, but often still full of tree-stumps. Men are seen ploughing with very small light

ploughs, which can turn easily among the stumps; ugly snake fences are present everywhere; queer little wooden huts are dotted about; and ragged, dirty children abound—a regular bit of backwoods life.

Passing through a long tunnel we come out upon the Greenbriar river, a quiet stream whose greenish waters are full of logs cut in the surrounding mountains and being floated down to the Ohio. At Hinton the New River joins our stream, the valley gradually narrows till we are walled in by grand crags and precipices, there are enormous fallen boulders, and the river foams over ledges and down whirling rapids. We passed a fine lofty point called Hawk's Nest, and soon after reached the Kanahwha river, which is navigable down to the Ohio. Here we saw one of the old-fashioned stern-paddle steamboats; the climate became warmer, a peach tree was in full blossom, and I even saw that rarity in America, a greenhouse attached to a small country house. All down the valley in alluvial flats the Western plane tree (Platanus occidentalis) had a remarkable appearance, its upper half being pure white, exactly as if white-washed. This is the colour of the young bark before it flakes off, as it does on the trunk and larger limbs. The peculiar appearance is not noticed by Loudon, so perhaps it is not produced in our less sunny climate.

I reached Coalburg at 3 P. M., where Mr. Edwards met me and took me to his pleasant house with a broad verandah in a pretty orchard at the foot of the mountain, which rises in a steep forest-clad slope close behind. The grass of the orchard was full of the beautiful white flowers of the blood-root (Sanguinaria canadensis), together with yellow and blue violets, and there were fine views of the river and high sloping hills, which, together with the tramways and coal trucks on the railway, and here and there the chimneys of a colliery engine, reminded me of some of the South Wales valleys. I spent four days here roaming about the country, seeing my host's fine collection of North American butterflies and his elaborate drawings of the larvæ at every moult, from their first emergence from the egg up to the pupa stage, which