Scientific Intelligence — Meteorology, 191 



win, I think, be sufficient to shew that the reverse is really the case, 

 and to satisfy a thinking mind that we cannot overrate the blessing 

 we derive from the wholesome alternation of labour and rest, which 

 is in a manner forced upon us by the succession of day and night. It 

 is impossible, by removing to a high latitude, to witness the difficulty 

 there is in the regulation of time ; the proneness that is felt by the 

 indefatigable and zealous to rivet themselves to their occupations, 

 and by the indolent and procrastinating to postpone their duties, 

 without being truly thankful for that allwise and merciful provision 

 with which nature has endowed the more habitable portions of the 

 globe. — Voyage of Disucovery towards the North Pole^ in 1818, by 

 Captain Beechey. 



2. An attempt to explain the Phenomena of the Freezing Cavern 

 at Orenburg. By Dr Hope.* — This cavern is one of several caves 

 which exist in the southern face of a lengthened low hillock of gyp- 

 sum. It is entered from the south by a passage rather narrow, and 

 is about fifteen feet high, ten paces long, and seven wide, which 

 seemed to send off irregular fissures into the body of the rock. 



The extraordinary feature of this cavern is, that during summer 

 it is so cold that ice is generated in it, and dry icicles hang from its 

 roof ; and that, in winter, all appearance of congelation ceases, and 

 the temperature becomes such that the Russians say they could sleep 

 in it without their sheep-skins. 



Mr Murchison applied to Sir John Herschel for an explanation, 

 and the theory which he proposed is, that the heat and cold of the 

 surface gradually move, though very slowly, backward into the rock ; 

 that it requires six months for the wave of cold, as he terms it, to 

 reach the cavern, and consequently, that that frigid wave begins to 

 arrive at the commencement of summer, and continues during that 

 season, occasioning such a degree of cold in the cavern as to pro- 

 duce the congelations described by Mr Murchison. 



At the commencement of winter, the first effect of the summer's 

 heat arrives, and continues without interruption, and occasions 

 warmth enough to prevent congelation. 



Dr Hope entirely concurred with Sir John Herschel in thinking 

 that alternate waves of heat and cold must exist and have a share 

 in producing the phenomena, and in corroboration quoted the ob- 

 servations of Saussure, that at Geneva the winter's cold requires 

 six months to descend 29^ feet, and that the summer's heat 



• Vide vol. xxxiv. p. 10, Edinburgh New Philosophical Jom*nal, for account 

 of this cavern. 



