He had
only seen it once, many years before, and he held stoutly to the usual
belief of the peasantry, that the ice is formed in summer, and melts in
winter; a belief which everything I had then seen contradicted. His last
words as we parted were, '_Plus il fait chaud, plus ca gele_;' and,
paradoxical as it may appear, I believe that some truth was concealed in
what he said, though not as he meant it. Considering that his ideas were
confined to his cattle and their requirements, and that water is often
very difficult to find in that part of the Jura, a _hot_ summer would
probably mean with him a _dry_ summer, that is, a summer which does not
send down much water to thaw the columns in the cave. Extra heat in the
air outside, at any season, does not, as experience of these caves
proves abundantly, produce very considerable disturbance of their low
temperature, and so summer water is a much worse enemy than extra summer
heat; and if the caves could be protected from water in the hot season,
the columns in them would know how to resist the possible--but very
small--increase of temperature due to the excess of heat of one summer
above another.
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