Dr. Schwalbe quotes the following series of observations in Dóbsina during the year 1881:
| ENTRANCE. | GROSSER SAAL. | DEEPEST POINT OF KORRIDOR. | FROM KORRIDOR TO KLEINEN SAAL. | |
| January | -2.2° | -4.2° | -2.2° | -0.6° |
| February | -1.2° | -3.4° | -1.9° | -0.3° |
| March | -1.4° | -2.1° | -0.9° | -0.2° |
| April | -0.25° | -1.25° | -0.7° | +0.3° |
| May | +0.7° | +0.9° | -0.5° | +0.5° |
| June | +1.0° | +1.5° | -0.5° | +0.5° |
| July | +1.8° | +2.1° | +0.2° | +1.1° |
| August | +3.4° | +3.8° | +0.24° | +0.80 |
| September | +2.00 | +2.3° | -0.3° | -0.15° |
| October | -0.2° | +0.2° | -0.5° | -0.2° |
| November | -1.3° | -1.9° | -0.6° | -0.3° |
| December | -2.2° | -3.2° | -0.65° | -1.75° |
| Year | +0.04° | -0.44° | -0.69° | -0.02° |
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, March, 1st, 1899, printed the following note about Dóbsina: “In this cave, some sixteen years ago, a couple named Kolcsey elected to pass the week immediately following their marriage. They took with them a plentiful supply of rugs, blankets and warm clothing, but notwithstanding all precautions, their experience was not of a sufficiently pleasant nature to tempt imitators.”
Lednica of Szilize. (M. Bel, Philosophical Transactions, London, 1739, vol. XLI., page 41 et seq.; Townson, Travels in Hungary, 1797; Terlanday, Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1893, page 283.)—It lies 1.5 kilometers from the village of Szilize, near Rosenau, in Gomör County, in the Carpathians, at an altitude of 460 meters. A pit about 35 meters deep, 75 meters long, and 48 meters wide opens in the ground, and at the southern end, in the perpendicular wall, is the cave. The entrance is 22 meters wide, 15 meters high, and faces north. A slope 4 meters long sinks with an angle of 35° to the floor of the cave, which is nearly circular in form, with a diameter of about 10 meters. On the east side of the cave there seems to be a hole in the ice some 10 meters deep.
In 1739, there was published in London a curious letter in Latin from Matthias Bel, a Hungarian savant, about the cavern of Szilize. He says: "The nature of the cave has this of remarkable, that, when outside the winter freezes strongest, inside the air is balmy: but it is cold, even icy, when the sun shines warmest. As soon as the snow melts and spring begins, the inner roof of the cave, where the midday sun strikes the outside, begins to sweat clear water, which drops down here and there; through the power of the inner cold it turns to transparent ice and forms icicles, which in thickness equal large barrels and take wonderful shapes. What as water drops from the icicles to the sandy floor, freezes up, even quicker, than one would think.
“The icy nature of the cave lasts through the whole summer, and what is most remarkable, it increases with the increasing heat of the sun. In the beginning of the spring the soft winter’s warmth begins to give way soon thereafter, and when spring is more advanced, the cold sets in, and in such a manner, that the warmer does the (outside) air grow, the more does the cave cool off. And when the summer has begun and the dog days glow, everything within goes into icy winter. Then do the drops of water pouring from the roof of the cave change into ice, and with such rapidity that where to-day delicate icicles are visible, to-morrow masses and lumps, which fall to the ground, appear. Here and there, where the water drips down the walls of the cave, one sees wonderful incrustations, like an artificial carpeting. The rest of the water remains hanging on the ice, according to the warmth of the day. For when for a longer time it is warmer, the ice of the stalactites, of the walls and of the floor increases; but when the ruling heat, as sometimes happens, is diminished through north winds or rainstorm, the waters freeze more slowly, the ice drips more fully and begins to form little brooklets. When however the temperature gets warmer, the icy nature of the cave begins once more. Some have observed, that the nature of the grotto receives the changes of temperature ahead, like a barometer. For, when a warmer temperature sets in outside, the waters change into ice, several hours before the heat sets in, while the opposite takes place, when by day the temperature is colder; for then even by the warmest sky the ice begins to melt noticeably.
“When the dog days have passed and the summer has already changed into fall, the cave with its own nature follows the conditions of the external air. In the early months and while the nights are growing colder, the ice diminishes visibly; then when the air cools off more and more and when the brooks and side are rigid with frost, it begins to melt as though there was a fire built underneath, until, when winter reigns, it is entirely dry in the cave, without a sign of ice being left behind. Then gentle warmth spreads into the entire cave, and this icy grave becomes a safety resort for insects and other small animals, which bear the winter with difficulty. But besides swarms of flies and gnats, troops of bats and scores of owls, hares and foxes take up their abode here, until with the beginning of spring, the cave once more assumes its icy appearance.”
These assertions of Bel are the most inaccurate ones made about glacières. Yet, strange to say, they have colored the literature of the subject down to our own times; and have been repeated many times, sometimes with, sometimes without, the hares and foxes; the latest repetition seeming to occur in 1883.
Cave near the Village of Borzova, Torna County, Carpathians. (Fugger, Eishöhlen, page 52.)—Reported to contain ice, but nothing certainly known.