Excerpt from The Caves of the Earth: Their Natural History, Features, and Incidents Caverns, differing endlessly in the detail, may be divided into three groups, each group being marked by a leading structural peculiarity. The first class are cavities, more or less narrow and prolonged, Open to the daylight at one extremity, and penetrating laterally or vertically the surface of the earth. The lateral direction is commonly followed, but the vertical is frequently met with. As an example of the latter, a yawning chasm in the limestone strata of the Peak of Derbyshire may be cited, locally called eldon-hole, formerly regarded as one of the wonders of that district, on account of its supposed unfathomable depth. Hobbes has celebrated it in Latin hexameters, and Cotton in rude English verse. Cotton endeavoured to ascertain its depth by a line from the brink, but without success, the weight of the rope being mistaken for the weight of the plummet, and hence suffered to descend1 coiling up at the bottom, or at a point where it was accidentally stopped. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.