THE 
EDINBURGH 
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 
Art. I. — On the Ice-caves or Natural Ice-houses found in some (f 
the Caverns of the Jura and the Alps *. By M. A. Pictet, 
F. R. S. L. & E. &c., and Professor of Natural Philosophy at 
Geneva. 
The extraordinary mildness of last winter, which could not 
furnish the ordinary provision for the artificial ice-houses, and the 
early and remarkable heat of the summer which has succeeded 
it, have turned the attention of the public towards those natural 
ice-caves which exist in different places, and which furnish an 
inexhaustible quantity of ice, in all seasons, to those who are suf- 
ficiently near these repositories to be able to profit by them. 
Independently of their utility in this point of view, these sin- 
gular masses of ice, existing in places where the mean temperar- 
ture is far above the freezing point, present, in their origin and 
their preservation, questions worthy of the attention of philoso- 
phers, particularly as they are connected with similar phenomena 
observed in situations otherwise very different. 
There are, in the chain of the Jura, at least two of these na- 
tural ice-caves; one called La Baume, is situated five leagues 
from Besan^on, near the Abbey of Grace Dieu ; the other lies 
in the slope of the Jura, which bounds the Canton de Vaud, 
about 5000 toises, as the bird flies, to the N.W. of Rolle. 
• Read at the Helvetic Society of the Natural Sciences, which met at Berne 
in July 1822. Professor Pictet had the goodness to transmit to us this curious pa- 
per for insertion in this Journal, before it was published in the Bibliotheque Universelle, 
VOL. VIII. NO. 15. JAN. 1823. A 
