The peasants were unanimous in these
statements, and asserted that they could sleep in the cave without
sheepskins in the depth of winter.
Sir Roderick Murchison and his friends were at first inclined to explain
these phenomena by supposing that the chief fissure communicated with
some surface of rock-salt, 'the saliferous vapours of which might be so
rapidly evaporated or changed in escaping to an intensely hot and dry
atmosphere as to produce ice and snow.' But Sir John Herschel, to whom
they applied for assistance, rejected the evaporation theory, and
suggested that the external summer wave of heat might possibly only
reach the cave at Christmas, being delayed six months in its passage
through the rock; the cold of winter, in the same manner, arriving at
midsummer. To this the explorers objected, that the mound contained many
caves, but' only in this particular fissure was any ice found. Dr.
Robinson, astronomer at Armagh, endeavoured to explain the matter by
referring to De Saussure's explanation of the phenomena of _cold
caves_ in Italy and elsewhere; but this, too, was considered
unsatisfactory.
Pages:
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391