206 Miscellanies. 



In consequence of the salt occurring at so small a depth, every pool 

 supplied with springs from below is affected by it;* and one of them used 

 by the inhabitants as a bath is so highly charged with saline contents that 

 there is a difficulty in keeping the body submerged, and the skin on leav- 

 ing the pool is encrusted with salt. This brine swarms with animalcules. 



Mr. Murchison then describes the freezing cavern and the phenomena 

 exhibited by it. The cave is situated at the southern base of a hillock 

 of gypsum, at the eastern end of the village connected with the imperial 

 establishment; and it is one of a series of apparently, for the greater 

 part, natural hollows, used by the peasantry for cellars or stores. The 

 cave in question is, however, the only one which possesses the singular 

 property of being partially filled with ice in summer and 'of being desti- 

 tute of it in winter. " Standing on the heated ground and under a broil- 

 ing sun, I shall never forget," says the author, "my astonishment when 

 the woman to whom the cavern belonged unlocked a frail door, and a 

 volume of air so piercingly keen struck the legs and feet that we were 

 glad to rush into a cold bath in front of us to equalize the effect." Three 

 or four feet within the door and on a level with the village street, beer 

 and quash were half frozen. A little further the narrow chasm opened 

 into a vault fifteen feet high, ten paces long, and from seven to eight 

 wide, which seemed to send off irregular fissures into the body of the 

 hillock. The whole of the roof and sides were hung with solid undrip- 

 ping icicles, and the floor was covered with hard snow, ice, or frozen 

 earth. During the winter all these phenomena disappear, and when the 

 external air is very cold and all the country is frozen up, the temperature 

 of the cave is such that the Russians state they could sleep in it without 

 their sheep-skins. — Loud. Edin. and Dub. Phil. Mag. for Nov. 1842. 



5. Extracts from a letter addressed by Sir J. Herschel, Bart., F. G. &., 

 to Mr. Murchison, explanatory of the Phenomena of the Freezing Cave 

 of Illetzkaya Zatchita. — " That the cold in ice-caves (several of which 

 are alluded to in a part of this letter not published) does not arise from 

 evaporation, is, I think, too obvious to need insisting on. It is equally 

 impossible that it can arise from condensation of vapor, which produces 

 heat, not cold. When the cold (by contrast with the external air, i. e. 

 the difference of temperature) is greatest, the reverse process is going on. 

 Caves in moderately free communication with the air are dry and (to the 

 feelings) warm in winter, wet or damp and cold in summer. And from 

 the general course of this law I do not consider even your Orenburg caves 



* The abundance of these brine-springs in various parts of Russia must lead, 

 the author says, to the abandonment of Pallas's hypothesis, that the saline pools 

 and lakes are the residue of former Caspians ; though he admits that some of the 

 vast low steppes of the South formed the bottom of a former condition of the ex- 

 isting Caspian. 



