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The Queen could not wear the necklace, however, for it made her head ache. The Faeries from the inside of caves came riding upon bats, and brought a stalactite made in the form of a horse of dandelion-down, for there is a favourite story among the Faeries in which such a horse figures. This was a very pretty piece of sculpture.

At present, we shall confine our views to one particular shape, which is simple, regular, and perfectly understood wherever it is formed. Drops of water falling from a roof, and forming stalactite, produce first tubular bodies, and then gradually consolidate and increase those pendulous bodies by incrustation.

Spaan's account, at first is somewhat hilly, changes gradually into undulating country, and finally into a plain in the middle of which, quite singularly, rises this lonely limestone mountain, full of holes and caves, about 1,000 metres long, 400 broad, and 100 high, with perpendicular walls. The caves are finely formed and have dome-shaped roofs, but few stalactite formations appear.

I acknowledged to myself that one of us had been flat that day, and had infected the other; but which was the original flat one? Some minds are like caves of stalactite and stalagmite, rich in treasures of beauty, the existence of which you may never suspect because you bring no light yourself to dispel the darkness that conceals them.

But no brilliant fragment of stalactite appeared as a reward for her search, and she turned away with a feeling of disappointment, and heaviness at her heart. As she did so, for the first time her eye fell upon a polished surface, much resembling the face of a mirror, upon the opposite wall.

He paused for a little while at the house where the Irish poet, Thomas Moore, once dwelt while a government employee on the island, and like every visitor he sat for a while under the famous Calabash Tree, renowned in verse. Nor did he fail to visit the marvelous stalactite caves of which Bermuda has five beautiful examples, lighted with electricity to display their wonders.

And clinging more firmly to the stalactite, Barbara rose on tiptoe and mingled her voice with the joyous cheers of the multitude. In the act her breath failed, and she felt a sharp pain in her chest, but she heeded the suffering as little as she did the weakness of her limbs. The physical part of her being seemed asleep or dead. Nothing was awake or living except her soul.

Next minute "the unobstructed beam" was shining right into the knapsack itself, for all the world like one of those little demon electric lights with which the dentist makes a momentary treasure-cave of your distended jaws, flashing with startled stalactite.

Now, if we shall except calcareous stalactite, and the bog ore of iron, How seldom is it that any appearance of those aqueous mineral concretion ever is found?

A lifetime may not suffice for that falling drop to add an appreciable increase to the stalactite down which it trickles, or to the growing stalagmite on which it falls; but when the operation has been in progress for immense ages, it is capable of the formation of the stately column.