Billerez, that in
his time (1711) there were three columns only, from 15 to 20 feet high.
But my own observation of the shape of the columns suggested that the
largest of all was probably an amalgamation of several others; so that
it is not unreasonable to suppose that after the Duc de Levi removed the
large columns seen by M. Billerez, a number of smaller columns were
formed on the old site, and that these had not become large enough to
amalgamate in 1743.
Not satisfied with these visits of August and October, M. de Cossigny
visited the cave in April 1745. He found the temperature at 5 A.M. to be
exactly at the freezing point, and at noon it had risen 1 deg.. From this he
concluded that the stories of the greater cold in the cave during the
summer, as compared with the winter, were false.
In 1769, M. Prevost, of Geneva, visited the cave, as a young man; and in
1789, he wrote an account of his visit in the _Journal de Geneve_
(March), which was afterwards inserted as an additional chapter in his
book on Heat.[186] He believed that one or two hundred _toises_ was the
utmost that could be allowed for the height of the hill in which the
glaciere lies,--a sufficiently vague approximation.
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