Books: The Pursuit of Potholes

CAVES OF ADVENTURE (222 pp.)—Haroun.Tazieff—Harper ($3).

For speleologists, the way down into the cave is often like the way up to heaven for saints—straight and narrow. Moreover, the pothole shaft is apt to be lined with slimy rock walls out of which icy waterfalls pour over the passing spelunker. He spins sickeningly sometimes, at the end of a quarter-inch strand of cable, while his fellow spelunkers lower him slowly into the unknown. Below, he is often the sole inhabitant, except for eyeless white cockroaches and the like, of a world of stone, water and...