Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 349 pages of information about Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland.

Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 349 pages of information about Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  In this neighbourhood, the montagne of any commune is represented by the feminine form of the name of the village:  thus, L’Arziere is the montagne of Arzier, and La Bassine of Bassin.  This has a curious effect in the case of some villages—­such, for instance, as S. Georges—­one of the landmarks of the district between the lakes of Joux and Geneva being the Chalet de la S. Georges, a grammatical anomaly which puzzles a stranger descending the southernmost slope of the Jura from the Asile de Marchairuz.  This law of formation is not universal; for the montagnes of Rolle and S. Livres are called the Pre de Rolle and the Pre de S. Livres, while the Fruitiere de Nyon is the rich upland possession of the town of that name.]

[Footnote 2:  Probably a relic of the time when the earlier Barons of Coppet possessed this district.  The families of Grandson, Lesdiguieres, and Dohna successively held the barony; and in later times the title de Coppet hid a name more widely known, for on the Chalet of Les Biolles, some distance to the east of La Baronne, the name of Auguste de Stael de Holstein de Coppet is carved, after the fashion of Swiss chalets.  This was Madame de Stael’s son, who built Biolles in 1817; it was afterwards sold to the commune of Nyon, and finally purchased by Arzier two or three years ago.]

[Footnote 3:  ‘Cornhill Magazine,’ June 1863, ’How we slept at the Chalet des Chevres.’]

[Footnote 4:  This is only a guess, made from a comparison with the ascertained heights of neighbouring points.]

[Footnote 5:  The patois of Vaud has a prettier name for this kind of stone—­le sex (or scex) qui plliau, the weeping-stone.]

[Footnote 6:  I brought one of these to England, and am told that it is the Stenophylax hieroglyphicus of Stephens, or something very like that fly.]

[Footnote 7:  Since writing this, I have been told that some English officers who visited the cave in the August of 1864 found no ice in any part.]

[Footnote 8:  See also p. 231.]

[Footnote 9:  P. 145.]

[Footnote 10:  P. 301.]

[Footnote 11:  It is possible that the freezing of the surface may play a curious part in the phenomena of the spring season in such caves.  Supposing the surface to be completely frost-bound, all atmospheric pressure will be removed from the upper surface of the water in the long fissures, and thus water may be held in suspension, in the centre of large masses of fissured rock, during the winter months.  The first thorough thaw will have the same effect as the removal of the thumb from the upper orifice in the case of the hand-shower-bath; and the water thus rained down into the cave will have a temperature sufficiently high to destroy some portion of the cold stored up by the descent of the heavy atmosphere of winter, or at least to melt out the ice which may have blocked up the lower ends of the fissures.]

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Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.