HUMAN FIGURE IN ICE, 3tf3 



of the figure, which was directly over the body. He was 

 recognized to be a traveller or pedlar, who frequently came into 

 those parts, and from the time of his having been missing, he 

 appears to have been drowned on the 30th of November. 



This most remarkable and uncommonly curious event, led us Speculations 

 into a variety of speculations 3 several of which were imme- <m tlleevcu • 

 diately refuted by a fuller statement of the enquiries they indi- 

 cated. The most obvious of these was that the body might 

 have risen under the ice during the period of its immersion and 

 afterwards subsided. But subsequent information opposed that Whether the 

 conjecture; there being no mark nor impression beneath tne J^n?* 11 

 ice, and very little could have been inferred as to the manner in 

 which such a rising and descending could have affected its ' .« 

 colour and transparency. In the search for parallel incidents, parallel facts. 



some obscure relations were brought forward concerning efflu- Inhalations 

 ..... _. , r , from graves, 



via, sometimes visible in particular forms over graves and & c 



places where the bodies of men in great numbers had been 

 interred after a battle, or over cemeteries where they are placed 

 together without much attention to the closeness of coffins or the 

 manner of covering them from the external air. Other more dis- Partial depo- 

 tinct observations were stated respecting the manner in which sition of^dew 

 dew and hoar frost shew themselves upon theground ; marking '* 

 particular places where there are drains, or old water courses 

 long filled up, or the bodies of trees or other organized sub- 

 stances, lodged beneath the surface: And along with those limited dis- 



facts, the very distinct and limited paths followed by low and tricts occ "" 

 j r A .**, ■•* r » . Pied by fogs : 



-dense logs at their commencement, and often during their 



whole appearance, and the almost constant recurrence of the 

 same outlines whenever that meteor appears, were also ad- 

 verted to. To these were added the artificial experiments 



of Muschenbroek, detailed in his Essai de Physique, who ex- 



3 7 experiments 



posed plates of earthen ware, china, glass, and metal 10 the 0:1 the filling ' 



falling dews, sometimes singly, and in other instances, one of dew ~ 



upon the other 3 and also those of the like description by Pre- 



vost*: in both which the dew attached itself to some of the 



surfaces and avoided others according to the circumstances of 



exposure and nature of the material. From all these we 



seemed warranted to infer that some exhalations or more pro- the a«encv « 



bably, some energy or power, referable, perhaps, to the? P*>wer ac{ 



phenomena of electricity or of heat, does or may rise., of upwards ;-* 



* Philos. Journal, III. 290. 



