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.