Ice-Caves

Abstract

THE occurrence of snow and ice in an old mine during the month of June, mentioned by Mr. J. Clifton Ward in his interesting paper in NATURE, vol. xi. p. 309—to the accuracy of the greater part of which I can bear personal testimony—has a more exact parallel in the Alps than “a Swiss glacier,” namely, a glacière. These remarkable caverns have been fully described by Mr. G. F. Browne in his able and pleasant work, “Ice-Caves of Switzerland and France;” and briefly by myself in “The Alpine Regions” Since the publication of that book I have seen others; and as one of these has never, I think, been described in any English work, I venture to take the opportunity of sending you a short account of it. It is in the Val d'Herens, a short distance from Evolena, on the way to the Pic d'Arzinol, and is called the Pertuis Freiss. A slip or subsidence of part of a cliff appears to have cracked the rock and opened two joints, into one of which fissures one can descend. This is about four feet wide and generally some four yards high, the floor being a little below the level of the ground outside. The crevice comes to an end in about a dozen yards. Against the slightly sloping wall of rock rested some pendent sheets of ice, whose thickness rarely appeared to exceed three inches, and irregular patches of ice lay about the floor. The temperature of the air appeared to be a little above the freezing (unfortunately, I had not a thermometer with me). It was a warm summer's day—July 23. The ice exhibited the usual prismatic structure, but the prisms seldom exceeded a third of an inch in diameter. I was informed that in winter it was choked up with snow. The other fissure also contained ice, but as it was less accessible, and seemed in no way different from the former, I did not enter it. The especial interest of this case is that it affords what I might call the most rudimentary type of a glacière; a natural ice-house, replenished every winter, and perhaps sometimes entirely cleared out during an unusually hot summer. The “Grotto” on Monte Tofana, near the Ampezzo Pass (which I have not been able to visit), is, I expect, another of this kind.