the most beautiful and picturesque. It is about a third of a mile long, with the vertical cliffs on either side 50 to 80 feet high, overhung with ivy, and relieved by a luxuriant growth of hazel and maple, stunted oak and ash wherever the scree at the bottom, or the cracks in the surface, allow the vegetation to root itself. Through it flows a stream dividing the counties of Derby and Nottingham, which now forms the beautiful sheet of water filling the bottom of the ravine. Caverns and fissures open on it on either side—on the north the Pin Hole, the Robin Hood, and Mother Grundy's Parlour (on the left of Fig. 40), and on the south the Church Hole Cavern.
The Pin Hole.
The Pin Hole, so called from a curious superstitious custom of dropping a pin into a small water-filled hollow in it, and of taking away at the same time one left by a previous visitor,[1] first attracted the attention of the Rev. J. M. Mello in 1875. It runs some 40 or 50 feet horizontally into the rock, and was partially filled with sand containing blocks of stone and large quantities of remains of animals. The sand and pebbles had been introduced by a stream, the large blocks had fallen from the roof in the long course of ages, while the fossil bones and teeth were so scored with teeth-marks as to show that their owners had fallen a prey to some wild beast, which had eaten not merely their flesh but their marrow-containing bones. This creature is proved to have been the spotted hyæna by the numerous teeth and
- ↑ This singular custom is probably connected with the ancient practice of making offerings to the dead, and in later times to fairies, in little cups in stones (see Chap. IX.)
