they are called Cleveland's Cabinet, in honor of Professor Cleveland, of
Bowdoin College. Silliman calls this admirable series, the Alabaster
Caves. He says: "I was at first at a loss to account for such beautiful
formations, and especially for the elegance of the curves exhibited. It
is however evident that the substances have grown from the rocks, by
increments or additions to the base; the solid parts already formed
being continually pushed forward. If the growth be a little more rapid
on one side than on the other, a well-proportioned curve will be the
result; should the increased action on one side diminish or increase,
then all the beauties of the conic and mixed curves would be produced.
The masses are often evenly and longitudinally striated by a kind of
columnar structure, exhibiting a fascicle of small prisms; and some of
these prisms ending sooner than others, give a broken termination of
great beauty, similar to our form of the emblem of 'the order of the
star.' The rosettes formed by a mammillary disk surrounded by a circle
of leaves, rolled elegantly outward, are from four inches to a foot in
diameter. Tortuous vines, throwing off curled leaves at every flexure,
like the branches of a chandelier, running more than a foot in length,
and not thicker than the finger, are among the varied frost-work of
these grottoes; common stalactites of carbonate of lime, although
beautiful objects, lose by contrast with these ornaments, and dwindle
into mere clumsy, awkward icicles. Besides these, there are tufts of
'hair salt,' native sulphate of magnesia, depending like adhering
snowballs from the roof, and periodically detaching themselves by their
own increasing weight. Indeed, the more solid alabaster ornaments become
at last overgrown, and fall upon the floor of the grotto, which was
found covered with numbers quite entire, besides fragments of others
broken by the fall."

A distinguished geologist has said that he believed Cleveland's Avenue,
two miles in length, contained a petrified form of every vegetable
production on earth. If this be too large a statement, it is at least
safe to say that its variety is almost infinite. Amongst its other
productions, are large piles of Epsom salts, beautifully crystallized.
Travellers have shown such wanton destructiveness in this great temple
of Nature--mutilating beautiful columns, knocking off spar, and crushing
delicate flowers--that the rules are now very strict. It is all