FOOTNOTES:
In this neighbourhood, the montagne of any commune is represented by the feminine form of the name of the village: thus, L'Arzière is the montagne of Arzier, and La Bassine of Bassin.
This has a curious effect in the case of some villages—such, for instance, as S. Georges—one of the landmarks of the district between the lakes of Joux and Geneva being the Châlet de la S. Georges, a grammatical anomaly which puzzles a stranger descending the southernmost slope of the Jura from the Asile de Marchairuz. This law of formation is not universal; for the montagnes of Rolle and S. Livres are called the Prè de Rolle and the Prè de S. Livres, while the Fruitière de Nyon is the rich upland possession of the town of that name.
Probably a relic of the time when the earlier Barons of Coppet possessed this district. The families of Grandson, Lesdiguières, and Dohna successively held the barony; and in later times the title de Coppet hid a name more widely known, for on the Châlet of Les Biolles, some distance to the east of La Baronne, the name of Auguste de Staël de Holstein de Coppet is carved, after the fashion of Swiss châlets. This was Madame de Staël's son, who built Biolles in 1817; it was afterwards sold to the commune of Nyon, and finally purchased by Arzier two or three years ago.
'Cornhill Magazine,' June 1863, 'How we slept at the Châlet des Chèvres.'
This is only a guess, made from a comparison with the ascertained heights of neighbouring points.
The patois of Vaud has a prettier name for this kind of stone—le sex (or scex) qui plliau, the weeping-stone.
I brought one of these to England, and am told that it is the Stenophylax hieroglyphicus of Stephens, or something very like that fly.
Since writing this, I have been told that some English officers who visited the cave in the August of 1864 found no ice in any part.
See also p. 231.
P. 145.
P. 301.
It is possible that the freezing of the surface may play a curious part in the phenomena of the spring season in such caves. Supposing the surface to be completely frost-bound, all atmospheric pressure will be removed from the upper surface of the water in the long fissures, and thus water may be held in suspension, in the centre of large masses of fissured rock, during the winter months. The first thorough thaw will have the same effect as the removal of the thumb from the upper orifice in the case of the hand-shower-bath; and the water thus rained down into the cave will have a temperature sufficiently high to destroy some portion of the cold stored up by the descent of the heavy atmosphere of winter, or at least to melt out the ice which may have blocked up the lower ends of the fissures.
On our previous visit, in 1861, we passed from Arzier through Longirod and Marchissy, stopping to measure and admire the huge lime-tree in the churchyard of the latter village. Our Swiss companion on that occasion was anxious that we should carry home some ice from the cave; and as the communal law forbade the removal of the ice by strangers, he hunted up a cousin in Marchissy, and sent him with a hotte across country, while we went innocently by the ordinary route through S. Georges. The cousin, however, contrived to lose himself in the woods, and we never heard of him again.
The size of this basin is exaggerated in the engraving on page 24, owing to the roughness of the original sketch.
See p. 253.
For further details on this point see pages 54 and 83.
These ladders have at best but little stability, as they consist of two uprights, careless about the coincidence of the holes, with bars poked loosely through and left to fall out or stay in as they choose, the former being the prevailing choice. One of the ladders happened to be firmer than the generality of its kind; but, unfortunately, its legs were of unequal lengths, and so it turned round with one of my sisters, leaving her clinging like a cat to the under side. When the bars are sufficiently loose, a difference of a few inches in the lengths of the legs is not of so much importance.
M. Thury found this hole, and fathomed it to a depth of 6-1/2 mètres.
Sancti Liberii locus, the Swiss Dryasdust explains. There is nothing to connect any known S. Liberius with this neighbourhood, unless it be the Armenian prince who secretly left his father's court for Jerusalem, and was sought for throughout Burgundy and other countries. It seems that Saint Oliver is merely a corruption of S. Liberius, the Italian form of the latter, Santo Liverio, having become Sant-Oliverio, as S. Otho became in another country Sant Odo, and thence San Todo, thus creating a new Saint, S. Todus.—Act SS. May 27.
My sisters made a two-days' excursion from Arzier to this glacière in the autumn of 1862, and found no snow in the bottom of the pit. They took the route by Gimel to Bière, intending to defer the visit to the glacière to the morning of the second day; but being warned by the appearance known locally as le sappeur qui fume, a vaporous cloud at the mouth of a cavern near the Dent d'Oche, on the other side of the Lake of Geneva, they caught the communal forester at once, and put themselves under his guidance. The distance from Bière is two hours' good walking, and an hour and a half for the return. There was no ladder for the final descent, and the neighbouring châlet could provide nothing longer than 15 feet, the drop being 30 feet. Two Frenchmen had attempted to make their way to the cave a week before; but the old 30-foot ladder of the previous year broke under the foremost of them, and he fell into the pit, whence he was drawn up by means of a cord composed of rack-ropes from the châlet, tied together. However useful a string of cow-ties may be for rescuing a man from such a situation, A. and M. did not care to make use of that apparatus for a voluntary descent, so they were perforce contented with a distant view of the ice from the lower edge of the pit.
See the section of this cave and pit on page 41.
A point common to the two sections, which are made by planes nearly at right angles to each other.
The dimensions of the two caves, and of the various masses of ice.
The Cartulary of Lausanne states that the wealthy village of Bière received its name from the following historical fact:—In 522, the Bishop of Lausanne, S. Prothais, was superintending the cutting of wood in the Jura for his cathedral, when he died suddenly, and was carried down on a litter to a place where a proper bier could he procured, whence the place was named Bière.
The most curious pit of this kind is the frais-puits of Vesoul, in the Vosgian Jura, which pours forth immense quantities of water after rain has fallen in the neighbourhood. The water rushes out in the shape of a fountain, and on one occasion, in November 1557, saved the town of Vesoul from pillage by a passing army. This pit is carefully described by M. Hassenfratz, in the Journal de Physique, t. xx. p. 259 (an. 1782), where he says that Cæsar was driven away from the town of Vesoul, which he had intended to besiege, by the floods of water poured forth from the frais-puits. I know of no such incident in Cæsar's life, though M. Hassenfratz quotes Cæsar's own words: the town of Vesoul, too, had no historical existence before the 9th or 10th century of our era. There is also a pit near Vesoul which contains icicles in summer, and may be the same as the frais-puits, for the old historian of Franche Comté, Gollut, in describing the latter, mentions that it is so cold that no one cares to explore it (pp. 91. 92).
See p. 122.
Jean Bontemps, Conseiller au bailliage d'Arbois.
'Allez vous en reposer, rafraischir et boire un coup au chasteau, car vous en avez bon besoin; j'ay du vin d'Arbois en mes offices, dont je vous envoyeray deux bouteilles, car je scay bien que vous ne le hayés pas.'—Petitot. iii. 9.
Mém. de la Comté de Bourgougne, Dôle, 1592, p. 486.
One of the Seigneurs de Chissey, Michaud de Changey, who died in high office in 1480, was known by preeminence as le Brave.
Dr. Buckland visited these caves in 1826, to look for bones, of which he found a great number. Gollut (in 1592) spelled the name Aucelle, and derived it from Auricella, believing that the Romans worked a gold mine there. It is certain that both the Doubs and the Loue supplied very fine gold, and the Seigneurs of Longwy had a chain made of the gold of those rivers, which weighed 160 crowns.
Dion Cass. lib. lxiii.
Ib. lib. lxvi.
Known locally as the Porte Noire, like the great Porta Nigra at Treves, and other Roman gates in Gaul.
I should be inclined, from what I saw of the country, to go to the station of Baume-les-Dames on any future visit, and walk thence to the glacière, perhaps three leagues from the station.
He was in error. The Paris correspondent of the 'Times' gave, some months since (see the impression of Jan. 20, 1865), an account of an interesting trial respecting the manufacture of the liqueur peculiar to the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu. From this account it appears that the liqueur was formerly called the Liqueur of the Grâce-Dieu, but is now known as Trappistine. It is limpid and oily; possesses a fine aroma, a peculiar softness, a mild but brisk flavour, and so on. It was invented by an ecclesiastic who was once the Brother Marie-Joseph, and prior of the convent, but is now M. Stremler, having been released by the Pope from his vows of obedience and poverty, in order that he might teach Christianity to the infidels of the New World. The Brothers took the question of the renunciation of poverty into their own hands, by declining to give up the money which Brother Marie-Joseph had originally brought into the society; so M. Stremler, being now moneyless, commenced the secular manufacture of the seductive Trappistine, in opposition to the regular manufacture within the walls of the Abbey, abstaining, however, from the use of the religious label which is the Brothers' trade-mark. The unfortunate inventor was fined and condemned in costs for his piracy.
See p. 310.
Journal des Mines, Prairial, an iv., pp. 65, &c.
One of the rights of the sovereigns of Burgundy was known by this name. The sovereign had the power of sending one soldier incapacitated by war to each abbey in the County, and the authorities of the abbey were bound to make him a prebendary for life. In 1602, after the siege of Ostend, the Archduke Albert exercised this right in favour of his wounded soldiers, forcing lay-prebendaries upon almost all the abbeys of the County of Burgundy. The Archduchess Isabella attempted to quarter such a prebendary upon the Abbey of Migette, a house of nuns, but the inmates successfully refused to receive the warrior among them (Dunod, Hist. de l'Église de Besançon, i. 367). For the similar right in the kingdom of France, see Pasquier, Recherches de la France, l. xii. p. 37. Louis XIV. did not exercise this right after his conquest of the Franche Comté, perhaps because the Hôtel des Invalides, to which the Church was so large a contributor, met all his wants.
'Quand on veut du poisson, il se faut mouiller;' referring probably to the method of taking trout practised in the Ormont valley, the habitat of the purest form of the patois. A man wades in the Grand' Eau, with a torch in one hand to draw the fish to the top, and a sword in the other to kill them when they arrive there; a second man wading behind with a bag, to pick up the pieces.
'Swift-foot Almond, and land-louping Braan.'
The sentry-box is omitted in the accompanying illustration.
Believed to be derived from Collis Dianæ. Dunod found that Chaudonne was an early form of the name, and so preferred Collis Dominarum, with reference to the house of nuns placed there.
Schmidt was not without the support of example in the indulgence of his warlike tastes. Thirty-eight years before, the religious took so active a part in the defence of Dôle against Louis XIII., that the Capuchin Father d'Iche had the direction of the artillery; and when an officer of the enemy had seized the Brother Claude by the cowl, the Father Barnabas made the officer loose his hold by slaying him with a demi-pique. When Arbois was besieged by Henry IV., the Sieur Chanoine Pécauld is specially mentioned as proving himself a bon harquebouzier.
There is a painting by Vander Meulen, representing this siege, in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
The Church of S. Philibert, in Dijon, now a forage magazine, has an inscription let into the wall almost ludicrously out of keeping with the present desecrated state of the building,—Dilexi Domine Decorem Domus tuæ, 1648.
'Qu'on les laisse pour grain!'
In the year 1648, it was suspected that some decay was going on in the material of this Host, and the following translation from the Latin describes the investigation entered into by the Dean and a large body of clergy and laity, in order to quiet the public mind:—'Après que tous les susnommés (viz. the Dean, Canons, President of the Parliament, &c.) étant présents eurent adorés le S. Sacrement, la custode fut ouverte avec tout le respect possible; et alors le dit Doyen aperçut un vermisseau roulé en spirale, qu'il saisit avec la pointe d'une épingle et plaça sur un corporal où chacun l'examina; puis on le brûla avec un charbon pris dans l'encensoir, et ses cendres furent jetées dans la piscine. On put alors constater tout le dommage que ce misérable petit animal avait causé aux espèces sacrées dont les débris ici tombaient en poussière, là se trouvaient rongés et lacérés, de telle sorte que l'Hostie n'avait presque plus rien de sa forme circulaire, et présentait de profondes découpures partout où le vermisseau s'était livré à ses sinueus es évolutions.'
Aigue, or egue, in the patois of this district, is equivalent to eau, the Latin aqua.
Ebel, in his Swiss Manual (French translation of 1818, t. iii.), mentions this glacière under the head Motiers, and observes that it and the grotto of S. Georges are the only places in the Jura where ice remains through the summer. This statement, in common with a great part of Ebel, has been transferred to the letterpress of Switzerland Illustrated.
Switzerland sent 7,500,000 gallons of absinthe to France in 1864.
Point d'argent, point de Suisse, is a proverbial expression which the Swiss twist into a historical compliment, asserting that it arose in early mercenary times, from the fact that they were too virtuous to accept the suggestion of the general who hired them, and wished them to take their pay in kind from the defenceless people of the country they had served.
It is probable that the ice is on the increase in this glacière, and that an archway, now filled up by the growing ice, has at one time existed in the wall on this side of the care, through which the ice and water used to pour into the subterranean depths of which the old woman had told us. At the time of our visit, we could find no outlet.
The following remarks may give some explanation of the phenomenon of alternating currents in this cave, I should suppose that during the night there is atmospheric equilibrium in the cave itself, and in the three pits A, B, C. When the heat of the sun comes into operation, the three pits are very differently affected by it, C being comparatively open to the sun's rays, while A is much less so, and B is entirely sheltered from radiation. This leads naturally to atmospheric disturbance. The air in the pit C is made warmer and less heavy than that in A and B, and the consequence is, that the column of air in C can no longer balance the columns in A and B, which therefore begin to descend, and so a current of air is driven from the cave into the pit C. Owing to the elasticity of the atmosphere, even at a low temperature, this descent, and the consequent rush of air into C, will be overdone, and a recoil must take place, which accounts for the return current into the cave from the pit C. The sun can reach A more easily than B, and thus the air is lighter and more moveable in the former pit, so that the recoil will make itself more felt in A than in B: accordingly, we found that the main currents alternated between A and C, with very slight disturbance in the neighbourhood of B. B will, however, play its part, and the weighty column of air contained in it will oscillate, though with smaller oscillations than in the case of A. Probably, when the sun has left A, while acting still upon C, the return current from C will be much slighter, and there will be a general settling of the atmosphere in the pits A and B, until C also is freed from the sun's action, when the whole system will gradually pass into a state of equilibrium.
Cruel comme à Morat was long a popular saying.
See p. 258.
Acta SS. Bolland. May 9.—If possessed of the characteristics of his race—'tall and proud'—his activity belies the first line of the old saying,
Bibl. Univ. de Genève, First Series, xxi. 113. See also Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, viii. 290.
Philosophical Magazine, Aug. 1829.
Colonel Dufour guessed the elevation of the cave, in 1822, at two-thirds the height of the Niesen, and forty years after, as General Dufour, he published the result of the scientific survey of Switzerland, which makes it 1,780 mètres; so that his early guess was not a bad one.
There is a hint of something of this kind in an editorial note in the Journal des Mines (now Annales des Mines) of Prairial, an. iv. pp. 71, 72, in connection with the glacière near Besançon.
M. Soret, who visited the Schafloch in September 1860, and communicated his notes to M. Thury, speaks of many columns in this part of the glacière, where we found only two. 'L'un d'entre eux,' he says, 'présentait dans sa partie inférieure une petite grotte ou cavité, assez grande pour qu'un homme pût y entrer en se courbant.'
See also the note at the end of this chapter.
'Toute la couche supérieure au plan de niveau passant par le seuil était chargée de brouillard; toute la couche inférieure à ce niveau était parfaitement limpide.' (Thury, p. 37.)
Respectively, 32°·666, 36°·266, and 32°, Fahrenheit.
Since I wrote this chapter, my attention has been called to a tourist's account of the Schafloch in Once a Week (Nov. 26, 1864), in an article called An Ice-cavern in the Justis-Thal. The writer says—'We proceeded to the farther end of the cavern, or at least as far as we thought it prudent, to ascertain where the flooring of ice rounded off into the abyss of unfathomable water we heard trickling below.' One of the party 'having taken some large stones with him, he began hurling them into the profound mystery. Presently a heavy double-bass gurgle issued forth with ominous depth of voice, indicating the danger of farther progress. Having thus ascertained that if either of us ventured farther he would most probably not return by the way he went, the signal of retreat was given, and in about forty minutes, after encountering the same amusing difficulties which had enlivened our descent, Æneas-like we gained the upper air.' It will be seen from my account of what we found in the 'abyss of unfathomable water,' that a little farther exploration might have effected a change in the writer's views.
A Yorkshire farmer unconsciously adapts the German Wolkenbruch, declaring on occasion that the rain is so heavy, it is 'ommust as if a clood had brussen someweers.'
I tried the hay in this châlet one night, with such results that the next time I slept there, two years after, I preferred a combination of planks.
i.e. New milk, warm.
Otherwise graphically called battu.
I had no means of determining the elevation of the ground. The fact of 12 feet of snow is of no value as a guide to the height. Last winter (1864-5) there was 26 feet of snow on the Jura, at a height of less than 4,000 feet, and the position of some of the larger châlets was only marked by a slight boss on the plane surface.
In the section of the cave, I have brought out the deeper pit from the side into the middle, so as to show both in one section: I have also slightly shaded the pits, instead of leaving them blank like shafts in the rock.
I have made arrangements for completing the exploration of this cave, and the one which is next described, in the course of the present summer.
The true Cimetière des Bourguignons is the enclosure where René, the victor of Nancy, buried the Burgundians who fell on the sad Sunday when Charles the Bold went down before the deaf châtelain Claude de Bagemont.
Neither of my companions, I fear, would have acted as Sejanus did, when another emperor was in danger of his life in the cave on the Gulf of Amyclæ. (Tacit. Ann. iv. 59.)
Water reduced to a temperature below 32° without freezing, begins to freeze as soon as a crystal is dropped into it, the ice forming first on the faces of the crystal.
Water attains its maximum of specific gravity at 40°. Below 40° it becomes lighter.
Première Série, t. xx. pp. 261, &c.
Less than 1/2° C., he says.
Bibl. Univ. de Genève, Première Série, t. xxv. pp. 224, &c.
Bibl. Univ. l.c.
Nouvelle Série, t. xxxiv. p. 196.
T. xxx. p. 157.
Vol. ii. p. 80.
Jean de Choul, De variâ Quercûs Historia, 1555.
Gollut, Mém. des Bourg. de la Franche Comté, p. 227.
Paradin de Cuyseaulx, Annales de Bourgougne, 1566, p. 14.
Several churches in Vienne are used as foundries and workshops. S. Peter's church was an iron-foundry four or five years ago, and is in future to be a museum—a considerable improvement upon its former use. The grand old church of S. John in Dijon has been rescued from the hands which made it a depôt of flour, and is being restored to its original purposes: but such instances are very rare.
This family took its rise in Dauphiné, before the district had that name: the chief place of the family was the château of Beaumont, near Grenoble.
The final victory was near Aquæ Sextiæ (Aix).
The cultivation of the silkworm mulberry will probably die out before very long. The silk crop has lately failed in Dauphiné, and a commission for enquiring into the relative merits of different worms has determined that the Senegal worm produces 633 millegrammes of silk, while the worm, fed on the mulberry produces only 290. The first mulberry trees in France were planted in that part of Provence which is enclosed by Dauphiné.
The feudal buildings were razed by order of Richelieu, but the tower remains a landmark for the valley. Three hundred détenus were confined here after the coup d'état of December 2, 1851.
The origin of the name Dauphin seems to be lost in obscurity, though of comparatively recent date. The Counts d'Albon took the title first in 1140, and their estates were not called the Terra Dalphini, or Dalphinatus, till 1291. The first Dauphins bore a castle, not a dolphin.
The old historian Gollut speaks of the clairets and clerets as red wines.
The 'Times' of Oct. 4, 1864, stated that almost no raw silk was offered at the last markets at Valence and Romans, and but for foreign supplies the mills must have been closed. The small amount that was offered sold at from 68 to 72 francs the kilogramme, while foreign cocoons from Calamata fetched only 22 francs at Marseilles.
Pausanias says that silkworms are apt to die of indigestion, the cocoons lying heavy on the stomach.
T. xxxv. pp. 244, &c.
M. de Thury calculated that the thickness of the roof at the lower part of the cave was about 60 feet of rock. He also noticed the peculiar structure of the ice, which afforded great surprise to his party. It was discovered by means of the coloured rays which were thrown into the different parts of the cave, when some one had casually placed a torch in a cavity in one of the columns.
The Caves of Szelicze are mentioned in Murray's Handbook of Southern Germany (1858, p. 555), where the following account is given of them:—'During the winter a great quantity of ice accumulates in these caves, which is not entirely melted before the commencement of the ensuing winter. In the summer months they are consequently filled with vast masses of ice broken up into a thousand fantastic forms, and presenting by their lucidity a singular contrast to the sombre vaults and massive stalactites of the cavern.'
Not far from Kaschau.
Travels in Hungary, 1797, pp. 317, &c.
A Peep into Toorkistan; London, 1846; chapters x. and xi.
They were now in a country far removed from the Affghans, and hostile to that people.
The remainder of this paragraph is in Captain Burslem's own words.
I am indebted for the knowledge of the existence of these caves to W.A. Sandford, Esq., F.G.S., who informed me that an account of them was to be found in a book of travels by an English officer. I am not aware that they have been visited on any other occasion than this.
Reise durch Island, Copenhagen, 1744 (being a German translation from the original Danish), i. 128 sqq.
Henderson's Iceland, ii. 189 sqq.
Pp. 145 sqq.
The Sturlunga, Landnama, and Holmveria Sagas.
Two priests determined to solve the mystery of this unapproachable valley, the Aradal, or Thoris-thal, with its rich meadows and gigantic inhabitants, and made an expedition for this purpose in 1664. They reached a point where the glaciers fell off into a valley so deep that they could not see whether there were meadows at the bottom or not, and the slope was so rapid that it was impossible to descend.
Voyage en Islande; Atlas Historique; t. ii., pl. 130-133.
Iceland: its Scenes and Sagas: pp. 97, 98.
Page 113.
Russia and the Ural Mountains, i. 186, sqq.
See the Papers read before the Geological Society of London, on March 9, 1842, by Sir John Herschel and Sir E. Murchison, the substance of which has been given above.
Voyages (French translation); Paris, 1788; i. 364.
In the gypsum to the NE. of Kungur, on the banks of the Iren, there is a cave containing ice. Four of its chambers have ice, in one of which a stalagmite of ice rises almost to the roof. The farthest chamber, 625 fathoms from the entrance, contains a lake of water which stretches away out of sight under the low roof. (Taschenbuch für die gesammte Mineralogie; Leonhard, 1826; B. 2, S. 425. Published as Zeitschrift für Mineralogie.)
Pallas, Voyages, i. 84.
Teneriffe, by Professor Smyth, ch. viii., and Humboldt, Voyage aux Régions Équinoctiales; Paris, 1814; i. 124.
They afterwards discovered smoke issuing from the centre of this patch of stones; so that volcanic heat may possibly have had something to do with the disappearance of the snow.
'Ce petit glacier souterrain,' Humboldt, l.c.
See p. 272 for an account of the underground glacier in the neighbourhood of the Casa Inglese.
Several of these caves are referred to by Reich, Beobachtungen über die Temperatur des Gesteins in verschiedenen Tiefen in den Gruben des Sächsischen Erzgebirges; Freiberg, 1834.
Naturwunder des Oesterr. Kaiserthums, iii. 40.
Mittheil. des Oesterr. Alpen-Vereins, ii. 441. I am indebted to G.C. Churchill, Esq., one of the authors of the well-known book on the Dolomite Mountains, for my knowledge of the existence of this cave, and of the Kolowrathöhle.
Beschreibung merkwürdiger Höhlen, ii. 283.
Geognostísche Reschreibung des bayerischen Alpengebirges; Gotha, 1861.
These constitute the upper bone bed and Dachstein limestone beds of the uppermost part of the Trias formation.
Hereynia Curiosa, cap. v. The same account is given in Behren's Natural History of the Harz Forest, of which an English translation was published in 1730.
See also Muncke, Handbuch der Naturlehre, iii. 277; Heidelberg, 1830.
See page 58. The more modern spelling is frais-puits.
liv. 292.
Described by Schaller, Leitmeritzer Kreis, p. 271, and by Sommer, in the same publication, p. 331. I have not been able to procure this book.
Böhmens Topogr., i. 339. This reference is given by Professor Pleischl.
Annalen, lxxxi. 579.
I was told, in 1864, by a chamois-hunter of Les Plans, a valley two hours above Bex, that some years before he was cutting a wood-road through the forest early in September, when, at a depth of 6 inches below the surface, he found the ground frozen hard. We visited the place together, but could find no ice. The whole ground was composed of a mass of loose round stones, with a covering of earth and moss, and the air in the interstices was peculiarly cold and dry.
Beobachtungen, &c. (see note on p. 258), 181.
Reich found the temperature of the ice to be 31·982° F., that of the air in the immediate vicinity 34·025°, and the rock, at a little distance, 32·765°.
iii. 150.
See many careful descriptions of these caves in the Annales de Chimie; also, an account by Professor Ansted, in his Science, Scenery, and Art, p. 29. M. Chaptal (Ann. de Chimie, iv. 34) found the lowest temperature of the currents of cold air to be 36º·5 F.; but M. Girou de Buzareingues (Ann. de Chimie et de Phys., xlv. 362) found that with a strong north wind, the temperature of the external air being 55º·4 F., the coldest current gave 35º·6 F.; with less external wind, still blowing from the north, the external air lost half a degree centigrade of heat, while the current in the cave rose to 38º·75 F. The cellars in which the famous cheese of Roquefort is ripened are not subterranean, but are buildings joined on to the rock at the mouths of the fissures whence the currents proceed. They are so valuable, that one, which cost 12,000 francs in construction, sold for 215,000 francs. The cheese of this district has had a great reputation from very early times. Pliny (Hist. Nat. xi. 97) mentions, with commendation, the cheeses of Lesura (M. Lozère or Losère) and Gabalum (Gevaudan, Javoux). The idolaters of Gevaudan offered cheeses to demons by throwing them into a lake on the Mons Helanus (Laz des Helles?) and it was not till the year 550 that S. Hilary, Bishop of Mende, succeeded in putting a stop to this practice.
It would seem from his own account of the Sauberg, and from the description given above of the presence of ice among the rocky débris, as well as from the account on this page of ice in Virginia, that a formation of loose stones is favourable to the existence of a low degree of temperature. See also the note on p. 263, with respect to the loose stones near Les Plans. Forchhammer found, on the Faroë Islands, that springs which rise from loose stones are invariably colder than those which proceed from more solid rock at the same elevation, as indeed might have been expected.
xvii. 337. The account is taken from a Dutch journal.
xix. p. 124.
October 11, 1829.
viii. 254.
Pp. 174-6.
Thermometer about 85° F.
v. 154.
iv. 300.
Die erlöschenen Vulkane in der Eifel, S. 59.
Dr. Gmelin, of Tubingen, detected the presence of ammonia both in clinkstone lava and in columnar basalt (American Journal of Science, iv. 371).]
Geology and Extinct Volcanoes of Central France, p. 60 (second edition).
Mr. William Longman has informed me that some years ago he had ice given him in summer, when he was on a visit to the inspector of mines at Pont Gibaud, and he was told that it was formed in a neighbouring cavern during the hot season.
Original edition of 1830, i. 369.
See Professor Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps, for an account of glacier-tables, sand-cones, &c. Anyone who has walked on a glacier will have noticed the little pits which any small black substance, whether a stone or a dead insect, sinks for itself in the ice.
Gilbert, Annalen, lxix. 143.
According to the latest accounts I have been able to obtain, a temperature of 29·75° F. had already been reached some years ago; the temperature, a few feet from the surface, being 14° below freezing. The soil here only thaws to a depth of 3 feet in the hottest summer. Sir R. Murchison wrote to Russia, in February last, for further information regarding this well.
Since I wrote this, Sir Roderick Murchison has applied to the Secretary of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg for further information respecting the investigations at Jakutsk. The Secretary gives a reference to Middendorff's Sibirische Reise, Bd. iv. Th. i., 3te Lieferung, Klima, 1861. I have only been able to find the edition of 1848-51; but in that edition, under the heading Meteorologische Beobachtungen, elaborate tables of the meteorological condition of Jakutsk are given (i. 28-49). Also, under the heading Geothermische Beobachtungen, very careful information respecting the frozen earth will be found (i. 157, &c., and 178, &c.). The point at which a temperature of 32° will be attained, is reckoned variously at from 600 to 1,000 feet below the surface.
Reise im Russischen Reich, i. 359; St. Petersburg, 1772.
xxxviii. 231 (an. 1791), in an article called Notice minéral, de la Daourie
L.c., p. 236.
Beobachtungen, &c., 194.
Mundus Subterraneus, i. 220 (i. 239, in the edition of 1678).
'Vidi ego in Monte Sorano cryptam veluti glacie incrustatam, ingentibus in fornice hinc inde stiriis dependentibus, e quibus vicini mentis accolæ pocula æstivo tempore conficiunt, aquæ vinoque quæ iis infunduntur refrigerandis aptissima, extremo rigore in summas bibentium delicias commutato.'
Both here and at Schemnitz, Kircher made particular enquiries on a subject of which scientific men have altogether lost sight. At Schemnitz he asked the superintendent, an comparcant Dæmunculi vel pygmæi in fodinis?—respondit affirmative, et narrat plura exempla; and at Herrengrund, utrum appareant Dæmunculi seu pygmæi?—respondit tales visos fuisse, et auditos pluries. (Edition of 1678, ii. 203, 205.)
Reich, 199.
i. 108 (Lyon, 1794).
Ueber die unterirdischen Gasarten, 101.
xvii. 386.
Mém. sur les Basaltes de la Saxe, p. 147.
Mineralog. Reisen, ii. 123.
Reich, 200, 201; Bischof, Physical Researches on the Internal Heat of the Globe, 46, 47.
Peters, Geologische und mineralogische Studien aus dem sudöstlichen Ungarn, in the Sitzungsberichte der kais. Ak. in Wien, B. xliii., 1te Abth., S. 435. See also pages 394 and 418 of the same volume (year 1861).]
Such ladders are in ordinary use in the Jura.
Turquie d'Europe, i. 132 (he quotes himself as i. 180, in the Sitzungsb, der k. Ak. in Wien, xlix. l.324).
L. c., p, 521.
As Gollut's phraseology is peculiar, it may be as well to reproduce his account of the cave:—'Je ne veux pas omettre toutefois (puisque je suis en ces eaux) de mettre en memoire la commodité que nature hat doné à quelques delicats, puis qu'au fond d'un mõntagne de Leugné, la glace (glasse in the index), se treuve en esté, pour le plaisir de ceux qui aim[~e]t a boire frais. Néanmoins dans ce t[~e]ps cela se perd, nõ pour autre raison (ainsi que íe pense) que pour ce que lon hat dépouillé le dessus de la mõtagne d'une époisse et aulte fustaie de bois, qui ne permettoit pas que les raions du soleil vinsent échauffer la terre et déseicher les distillations, que se couloi[~e]t iusques au plus bas et plus froid de la montagne: ou (par l'antipéristase) le froid s'epoississoit, et se reserroit, contre les chaleurs, entornantes et environnantes le long de l'esté, toute la circonference extérieure du mont.'—Histoire, &c. p. 87.
Hist. de l'Acad., t. ii., p. 2.
Hist. de l'Acad., an 1712, p. 20.
C'est à dire—M. Billerez explains—à 10 degrés au-dessous du très-grand froid. What the 60° may be worth, I cannot say.
Tournefort (Voyage du Levant, iii. 17) believed that the ammoniac salt, of which the earth was full in some districts near Erzeroum, had something to do with the persistence of snow on the ground there.
Hist, de l'Acad., an 1726, p. 16.
But see on this point the experience of M. Thury, in the Glacière of S. Georges (Appendix).
Sir Roderick Murchison's suggestion of the possible influence of salt in producing the phenomena of his ice-cave in Russia, did not, of course, proceed upon the supposition of salt actually mingling with water, but only of its increasing the evaporation of the air which came in contact with it.]
Mém. présentés à l'Académie par divers Sçavans, i, 195.
A long account was published in a history of Burgundy, printed at Dijon, in quarto, in 1737, which I have not been able to find. It was from the same source as the account in the Hist. of the Academy, in 1726.
I took this earth to be a collection of the particles carried down the slope of ice by the heavy rains of the month preceding my visit. M. de Cossigny speaks of the abundant rains of July, his visit being in August.
Recherches sur la Chaleur; Geneva and Paris, 1792.
P. 65. Now called Annales des Mines.
T. xlv. p. 160
Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, Première Série, t. xx.
See De Saussure's account of his numerous observations of such caves in the Voyage dans les Alpes, sections 1404-1415.
P. 271.
xxi. 113.
P. 271.
Daubuisson estimated the depth in question at from 46 to 61 feet, while Kupffer put it at 77 feet.
De Saussure found a variation of 2°·25 F. at a depth of 29·5 feet; but this was in a well, where the influence of the atmosphere was allowed to have effect. Naturally, the fissures which there may be in the rock surrounding a cave will increase the annual variation of temperature, by affording means of easier penetration to the heat and cold.
The continued extrication of latent heat by ice, as it is cooled a few degrees below 32° F., appears to indicate a molecular change subsequent to the first freezing.—Phil. Trans., as quoted in the next note.
See the paper 'On Liquid Diffusion as applied to Analysis,' by the Master of the Mint (Phil. Trans. 1861, p. 222).
Compare the description of one of the hollow stalagmites I explored in the Schafloch, p. 145.
Professor Tyndall has pointed out that, owing to the want of perfect homogeneity, some parts of a block of ice exposed to a temperature of 32° F. will melt, while others remain solid (Phil. Trans. 1858, p. 214). He also arrived at the conclusion (p. 219) that heat could be conducted through the substance of a mass, and melt portions of the interior, without visible prejudice to the solidity of the other parts of the mass.
Journal des Mines, xxxiii. 157. See also an English translation of his account in the second volume of the Edinburgh Journal of Science.
It is to be hoped that the accuracy of his scientific descriptions exceeds that of his topographical information; for he states that the glacière is two leagues from Valence, whereas it cost me six hours' drive on a level road, and five and a half hours' walking and climbing, to reach it from that town.
Branch Physique, article Glace
P. 146 (an. 1853).
Dr. Lister experimented on sea-water in December 1684 (Ph. Trans, xiv. 836), and found that though it took two nights to freeze, it was much harder when once frozen than common ice, lasting for three-quarters of an hour under a heat which melted 100 times its bulk of common ice at once. It was marked with oblong squares, and had a salt taste. Ice formed from water with an admixture of sulphuric acid is said to assume a crystalline appearance.
See also a pamphlet entitled Das unterirdische Eisfeld bei der Dornburg am Südlichen Fusse des Westerwaldes, by Thomä of Wiesbaden (32 pages, with a map of the district), published in 1841.
But see page 262.
lv. (an 1842), 472.
Journal de Physique, xxvi. (an 1785), 34.
In looking through some early volumes of the Philosophical Transactions, I found an 'Extract of a letter written by Mr. Muraltus of Zurich (September 1668), concerning the Icy and Chrystallin Mountains of Helvetia, called the Gletscher, English'd out of Latin' (Phil. Trans. iv. 982), which at first looked something like an assertion of the prismatic structure of ice on a large scale. The English version is as follows:—'The snow melted by the heat of the summer, other snow being faln within a little while after, and hardened into ice, which by little and little in a long tract of time depurating itself turns into a stone, not yielding in hardness and clearness to chrystall. Such stones closely joyned and compacted together compose a whole mountain, and that a very firm one; though in summer-time the country-people have observed it to burst asunder with great cracking, thunder-like.'
See the woodcut illustrating Professor Tyndall's remarks in the 148th volume of the Philosophical Transactions (1858, p. 214).
Bischof, Physical Researches, 189.
Philosophical Magazine, v. 446 (1834).
Annules de Chimie et de Physique, liii. 2-10. See also Bischof, 136.
The English edition of Bischof affords here a proof of the danger of frequent changes from one scale to another. Bischof in the first instance rendered Boussingault into degrees Réaumur, and this was in turn reduced to degrees Fahrenheit; the result being that the authorised English edition of his book gives 2°·25 F. for 127·5 feet, which does not come within 10 feet of Boussingault's statement.
M. Thury calculates a decrease of 1° C. for every 174 mètres between Geneva and S. Bernard, which is less than the decrease given in the text. He arrives at this conclusion by correcting the mean temperature of Geneva from 8°·9 C., the observed mean of eighteen years, to 9°·9 C., in consequence of supposed local causes, which unduly depress the temperature of Geneva. With the mean 8°·9 C. a result nearly in accordance with that of the text is obtained.
Professor Phillips found, in the course of his investigations in the Monk Wearmouth mines, some hundreds of yards below the sea, that when a new face of rock was exposed, its temperature was considerably higher than that of the gallery or shaft in which it lay. In some cases the difference amounted to 9 and 10 degrees. The rock soon cooled down to an agreement with the surrounding temperature.
This was given by a thermometer only placed in the cave at 7 P.M., and by construction not very sensible.
The moment when the disturbance of the atmosphere commenced.
M. Thury gives—4°·62 C. as the minimum in the glacière during the night in question; but on the next page he gives—6°·8 C. (=19°·76 F.). It is evident, from a comparison with other details of his observations, that the latter is the correct account.