It was clearly, then, no great loss to miss the Glaciere of the Brezon; but that on the Mont Vergy, in the Valley of Reposoir, appears to be much more interesting.  Professor Pictet found himself sufficiently strong after a day’s rest to pass on to Scionzier, and up the Valley of Reposoir, accompanied by the well-known guide Timothee, whose botanical knowledge of the district is said to be perfect.  He had conducted MM.  Necker and Colladon to the glaciere in 1807, and believed that no savant had since seen it.  The rocks are all calcareous, with large blocks of erratic granite.  The glaciere lies about 40 minutes from the Chalet of Montarquis, whence its local name of La grand’ Cave de Montarquis.  Before reaching it, a spacious grotto presents itself, once the abode of coiners:  this grotto is cold, but affords no ice, and near it M. Morin found a narrow fissure, leading into a circular vaulted chamber 15 feet in diameter, in which stood a solitary stalagmite of ice 15 feet high.

The entrance to the glaciere itself is elliptical in shape, 43 feet broad at the base, and the cave increases in size as it extends farther into the rock, the floor descending gently till a horizontal esplanade of ice is reached.  This esplanade was 66 feet by 30 at the time of Pictet’s visit, deeper in the middle than at the sides, and mounting the rock at the farther side of the cave; there was a small stalagmite at one side, but that would seem to have been the only ornamentation displayed.  The temperature was 34 deg..7, a foot above the ice, and 58 deg. in the external air.  Timothee had been in the glaciere in the previous April, and had found no ice,—­nothing but a pool of water of considerable depth.  M. Thury, in August 1859, found two sheets of ice in the lowest part of the cave:  one, nearly 50 feet long, was partially covered with water; the other, presenting an area of about 14 square yards, showed more water still.  There were no stalactites and columns such as M. Morin had found in August 1828, nor even the low stalagmite which Pictet saw in 1822.  The summers of 1828 and 1859 were exceptionally hot, and this fact has been held to account for the smaller quantity of ice seen in those years.  M. Thury found the cold due to evaporation to be considerably less than 1 deg.  F.,[78] and he and M. Morin both fixed the general temperature of the cave at 36 deg..5; they also found a current of air entering by a fissure in the lowest part of the cave, but it did not disturb the whole of the interior, for in one part the air was in perfect equilibrium.  M. Gampert,[79] in the summer of 1823, found a strong and very cold current of air descending by this fissure, along with water which ran from it over the ice; he believed that this was refrigerated by evaporation, in passing through the thickness of the moist rock.