No other well in that
neighbourhood presents the same phenomenon. A lighted candle was let
down, and the flame became agitated and thrown in one direction at a
depth of 30 feet, but was quite still at the bottom; where, however, it
soon died out. The water is hard or limestone water.
Rocks of volcanic formation would seem to afford favourable
opportunities for the formation of ice. Scrope mentions this fact in an
account of the curious district called Eiffel or Eifel, in Rhenish
Prussia, which was published originally in the 'Edinburgh Journal of
Science,'[147] and has since been translated in Keferstein's
Deutschland.[148] The village of Roth, near Andernach, is built on a
current of basalt, derived from the cone above it, which has at some
time sent down a stream of lava to the north and west. A small cavern
near the village, forming the mouth of a deep fissure in the
lava-stream, half-way up the cone, displays a phenomenon which the
writer says he has often observed in volcanic formations. The floor of
the cavern was covered with a crust of ice at the time of his visit,
about noon on a very hot day in August.
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