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National Geographic : 1925 Sep
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NEW DISCOVERIES IN CARLSBAD CAVERN Photograph by Jacob Gayer TIIE' "BILLING DOVES" A curious remnant of limestone has been left by the solution of the rocks about it. The resemblance to birds' heads is striking when viewed from a certain point. Such freaks in the great solution cavities of Carlsbad Cavern keep observers busy imagining resemblances to familiar objects and suggesting analogies. lie carried a kerosene torch, which gives little light and much smoke. By such fitful gleams things look weird and unreal. All went well until he reached the water at the bottom of the hole. To his per turbed mind this seemed like an ocean. I lis frantic signals to be raised were mis understood and he was dropped uncere moniously into the pool. With light gone, he passed an unhappy moment in pitch darkness before he discovered that he could touch bottom. Under the dome stand numerous stalag mites, like pedestals in a hall of fame; over them hang great pendants, like sharp pointed daggers. One instinctively stands from under the great masses which seem so precariously fastened, for the fact that they have hung securely for thousands of years does not reassure the nervous ex plorer. Especially is this true as he stands beside a mass of similar material which did fall-a mass which would weigh 100oo,ooo tons and which fell 200 feet from the ceiling! Of the two main avenues leading from this central rotunda back into mysterious places, that to the left is profusely deco rated, the stalactites seeming to push for ward for attention, as if each were trying to say, "Behold me! In this basal dark ness I have waited 1o,ooo years for one admiring glance." A surprising phenomenon was found here. Solution is gradually removing ma terial and the floor is slowly sinking, with the result that great columns have been snapped asunder and drawn apart (see illustration, page 304). A DRINKING FOUNTAIN WORTIIY OF TIIE GODS The avenue to the right leads to the Rookery, so called because of its many egglike bodies of cave marble. Over a considerable area the floor is covered with these bodies, known to geologists as piso lites and to the jeweler as cave pearls. The "eggs" occur singly and in groups. Some have grown fast to the floor; others 31
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