Coffee Table Book of: Caves (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Caves is a large format book of caves, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: limestone caverns hung with stalactites, crystal hollows, blue ice caves, sea caves and arches, cenotes and still underground lakes, with the cave mouths and the land above them at many hours and in every season.

Deep in the limestone, slender stalactites hang over a mirror pool, a lone stalagmite rises from a vast dark floor and a great column joins floor to roof, while flowstone ripples down a wall, draperies glow when lit from behind and rimstone pools step down a passage.

The crystal hollows hold an amethyst geode, white needles of aragonite, curling gypsum flowers, sharp dogtooth crystals under water and great beams of gypsum crossing a deep chamber. The ice caves glow blue beneath glaciers, with a frozen waterfall, clear ice stalagmites, feathery frost crystals, icicles across a cave mouth in midwinter, a cone of snow beneath a shaft and an iceberg worn through by an arch.

By the sea, waves have carved caves into an islet, a lone stack and walls of six sided basalt, a grotto glows blue with light from below the water, spray bursts from a blowhole in a winter storm, anemones crowd a cave pool and a grey seal rests on a pebble beach.

Outside and above, cave mouths open in a limestone tower at dawn, a beech wood in autumn, a snowy crag and a hill under the stars, mist drifts from a cave on a frosty morning, a shaft breathes on a snowy plateau, a sandstone butte glows at sunset and birches ring a sinkhole in autumn gold. Bats cluster on a cave roof, glow worms light a ceiling like stars, a pale cave fish, a cave salamander and a cave cricket live in the dark, and swallows nest at the mouth.

Short notes run through the book, on how caves and their formations grow, the life that finds a home in the dark, and the ice, sea and lava that carve caves of their own: steep limestone towers stand where water has slowly dissolved away the rock all around them, cave pearls grow in shallow pools, turned by falling drops so each builds up round in thin layers, soda straws are thin hollow tubes, the first stage of a stalactite, with water running down inside, and a blowhole forms where the roof of a sea cave cracks through and waves force spray up through it.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.