Tour the Smithsonian After its First Fifty Years

Geology can have only a meagre representation in the National Museum until another building is provided. Immense stores of specimens of rocks, drawings of sections to illustrate dynamic geology, denudation, etc., are in reserve, besides thousands of fossils.

Few objects of interest are as yet exhibited. The pictures of scenery and structure near the Grand Canyon of the Rio Colorado, made for the U. S. Geological Survey by W. H. Holmes; models of that profound gorge; of the Yellowstone National Park, of the bristling peaks of the Sierra San Juan (recalling the dolomite district of the Alps), of Vesuvius with its lava channels, and others, will attract attention.

A few of what may be called the curiosities of geology, however, must not be overlooked, first of all the column and sparkling stalagmites and stalactites from the cavern of Luray, the most interesting of all American caves, although of less size than the Mammoth.

The Luray caverns are in Page county, Virginia, and easily accessible from Washington, since they lie directly upon the line of the Shenandoah Valley railway. They were discovered in 1870 and Soon opened to the public by an enterprising company of owners who built an exceedingly comfortable hotel, the Luray Inn, established a regular hack service, and lighted the caves by electricity These caves are of vast extent and some of the chambers are of great size. They are characterized by the great abundance of stalactites and stalagmites, by the variety and beauty of form these assume and their richness of color. A complete description of the caverns forms chapter xix of Ernest Ingersoll's " Country Cousins " (Harper & Brothers 1884). Nowhere can the study of cave-geology be better prosecuted. The geyserite deposited by the mineral waters of the geysers in the Yellowstone National Park give a hint of those brilliant colors, which are thought so greatly exaggerated in pictures of that marvelous region; and the suspended bars of " flexible sandstone," show a remarkable exception to the customary rigidity of rock.

The flexibility of this stone, which occurs in North Carolina, is due to the circumstance that its grains are extremely irregular in surface and shape, and have scattered among them particles of mica. Their roughness and angularity permit a certain amount of play. The bending, therefore, is not elasticity, but due to looseness in the composition of the rock, and cannot be carried beyond a certain limit, when it comes to a sudden stop.

Much geological material in the Museum falls properly into some of the succeeding departments, and will be found mentioned in its proper place, an observation which might be repeated for each and every department, since in different aspects the same object will generally illustrate several phases of the exhibition scheme.

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