Tyrolese Alps, and Carpathians: and also occasionally in the United States. Peasants and guides tell you with absolute confidence:" The hotter the summer the more ice there is." The strange thing is that any number of writers—sometimes scientific men—have accepted the ideas and statements of the peasants about the formation of ice in summer, and have tried to account for it.
The belief of the peasants is founded on the fact that they scarcely ever go to any cave except when some tourist takes them with him, and, therefore, they rarely see one in winter, and their faith is not based on observation. It is, however, founded on an appearance of truth: and that is on the fact that the temperature of glacière caves, like that of other caves or that of cellars, is colder in summer than the outside air, and warmer in winter than the outside
air. Possessing neither reasoning powers nor thermometers, the peasants simply go a step further and say that glaciere caves are cold in summer and hot in winter.
Professor Thury tells a story to the point. He visited the Grand Cave de Montarquis in midwinter. All the peasants told him there would be no use going, as there would be no ice in the cave. He tried to find even one peasant who had been to the cave in winter, but could not. He then visited it himself and found it full of hard ice.
While the writer does not claim, as these peasants, that the heat of summer is the direct and only cause of the formation of ice, he does hold that it is an indirect cause and that the ice to be seen in the Sweden Valley Ice Mine is formed after the temperature outside the mine is far above the freezing point, and it is when the temperature outside is the highest that the ice is formed the most rapidly. The cause of this will be explained shortly.
