ABSTRACT
The birth of modern speleology should date from the publication of Die Grotten und Höhlen von Adelsberg, Lueg, Planina und Laas (Schmidl, 1854), the first speleological treatise dealing with different caving topics from biology to mineralogy, and from cave exploration to mapping. Later, in 1882, Celebrated American Caverns (Hovey, 1882) became the first important caving book printed outside Europe. The caver who most improved caving literature was E.A.Martel, who almost single-handedly brought speleology to the attention of the wider public. In his lifetime he printed over 700 articles and over 20 books on caving topics (see Chabert & Courval, 1971), the most famous being Les Abîmes (1894) (Figure 2) and Nouveau traité des eaux souterraines (1921). Thanks to Martel’s activities, from the end of the 19th century several books on caves and speleology began to be printed worldwide. The Austrian G.Kyrle also contributed with outstanding papers: in particular his Grundriss der Theoretischen Speläologie (1923) should be mentioned here.
